Larry Wall Quotes - Page 3

Unix is like a toll road on which you have to stop every 50 feet to pay another nickel. But hey! You only feel 5 cents poorer each time.

Almost nothing in Perl serves a single purpose.

There's often more than one correct thing. There's often more than one right thing. There's often more than one obvious thing.

At many levels, Perl is a 'diagonal' language.

[Boxed] Multiple bouncing balls in a box are a metaphor for community. Notice how the escaping balls explode. This is what happens to people who move from Perl to Ruby.

Perhaps I'm missing the gene for making enemies.

The camel has evolved to be relatively self-sufficient. On the other hand, the camel has not evolved to smell good. Neither has Perl.

Let us be charitable, and call it a misleading feature.

Being famous has its benefits, but fame isn't one of them.

You can prove anything by mentioning another computer language.

I think operating systems work best if they're free and open. Particular applications are more likely to be proprietary.

It's there as a sop to former Ada programmers.

Although the Perl Slogan is There's More Than One Way to Do It, I hesitate to make 10 ways to do something.

It should be illegal to yell 'Y2K' in a crowded economy.

Somebody out there is going to do something that's far more surprising than anything that I would do. I was surprised by the whole web thing in the first place.

The whole intent of Perl 5's module system was to encourage the growth of Perl culture rather than the Perl core.

Perl was designed to work more like a natural language. It's a little more complicated but there are more shortcuts, and once you learned the language, it's more expressive.

Many computer scientists have fallen into the trap of trying to define languages like George Orwell's Newspeak, in which it is impossible to think bad thoughts. What they end up doing is killing the creativity of programming.

Perl should remain fast and intuitive (to the extent that it is :-)

Many days I don't write any code at all, and some days I spend all day writing code.

I'm definitely a night owl. I get going about the time my wife crashes and goes to bed. And in some sense, I've had to learn to be more of a cat napper in recent years because Perl development, Perl design and development, has become a worldwide phenomenon - not just mailing lists, but RSC channels, Twitter even. This all happens 24 hours a day. And people come up with questions at any time of the day or night.

That which hits the fan tends to get flung in all directions.

The Harvard Law states: Under controlled conditions of light, temperature, humidity, and nutrition, the organism will do as it damn well pleases.

If someone stinks, view it as a reason to help them, not a reason to avoid them.

Let's say the docs present a simplified view of reality.