Larry Wall
Post-Modernism was a reaction against Modernism. It came quite early to music and literature, and a little later to architecture. And I think it's still coming to computer science.Collection: Architecture
I want people to use Perl. I want to be a positive ingredient of the world and make my American history. So, whatever it takes to give away my software and get it used, that's great.Collection: Positive
Doing linear scans over an associative array is like trying to club someone to death with a loaded Uzi.Collection: Technology
When I announced the development of Perl 6, I said it was going to be a community design. I designed Perl, myself. It's limited by my own brain power. So I wanted Perl 6 to be a community design.Collection: Design
Real programmers can write assembly code in any language.Collection: Technology
The three chief virtues of a programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris.
The Harvard Law states: Under controlled conditions of light, temperature, humidity, and nutrition, the organism will do as it damn well pleases.
For me, writing is a love-hate relationship.
I talked about becoming stupid, but I've always been stupid. Fortunately I've been just smart enough to realize that I'm stupid.
I take time to watch anime. I don't know whether I'm allowed to, but I do it anyway.
Hubris itself will not let you be an artist.
I am not a sort of person who wants to run a company.
I still drive my 1977 Honda Accord. The paint is almost all worn off. It's still running.
I think computer science, by and large, is still stuck in the Modern age.
I think operating systems work best if they're free and open. Particular applications are more likely to be proprietary.
I think software patents are a bad idea. Many patents are given for trivial inventions.
I think the way IBM has embraced the open source philosophy has been quite astonishing, but gratifying. I hope they'll do very well with it.
I'm just paid to do whatever I want to do. Some of the time it's development, and some of the time it's just goofing off.
I'm never satisfied because I've been always interested in too many things and I always want to do everything at once.
If any ideology is so serious that you can't have fun while you're doing it, it's probably too serious.
If you're a large corporation, you can afford to pay the money to register patents, but if you're an individual like me, you can't.
Many days I don't write any code at all, and some days I spend all day writing code.
One of the very basic ideas of Post-Modernism is rejection of arbitrary power structures. Different people are sensitive to different kinds of power structures.
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.
Programmers can be lazy.
Some of modern engineering is necessary to good art. But I think of myself is a cultural artist.
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 problems that I really like to solve are our cultural problems.
The world has become a larger place. The universe has been expanding, and Perl's been expanding along with the universe.
There is no schedule. We are all volunteers, so we get it done when we get it done. Perl 5 still works fine, and we plan to take the right amount of time on Perl 6.
To be a good artist, you have to serve the work of art and allow it to be what it is supposed to be.
We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on when it's necessary to compromise.
We are so Post-Modern that we don't realize how Post-Modern we are anymore.
Younger hackers are hard to classify. They're probably just as diverse as the old hackers are. We're all over the map.
Most of you are familiar with the virtues of a programmer. There are three, of course: laziness, impatience, and hubris.Collection: Funny
Easy things should be easy, and hard things should be possible.Collection: Easy
If you and I always agree, then one of us is redundant.Collection: Redundant
Laziness is a programmers main virtue.Collection: Inspiring
Just don't create a file called '-rf.'Collection: Computer
True greatness is measured by how much freedom you give to others, not by how much you can coerce others to do what you want.Collection: Inspiring
Computer languages differ not so much in what they make possible, but in what they make easy.Collection: Language
People get annoyed when you try to debug them.Collection: People
The problem with using C++ ... is that there's already a strong tendency in the language to require you to know everything before you can do anything.Collection: Strong
A good messenger expects to get shot.Collection: Messengers
We can debug relationships, but it's always good policy to consider the people themselves to be features. People get annoyed when you try to debug them.Collection: People
I'm reminded of the day my daughter came in, looked over my shoulder at some Perl 4 code, and said, 'What is that, swearing?Collection: Daughter
Lisp has all the visual appeal of oatmeal with fingernail clippings mixed in.Collection: Oatmeal
Perl is worse than Python because people wanted it worse.Collection: Python
I think it's a new feature. Don't tell anyone it was an accident.Collection: Thinking
Computer language design is just like a stroll in the park. Jurassic Park, that is.Collection: Technology