As pointed out in a followup, Real Perl Programmers prefer things to be visually distinct. Larry Wall More Quotes by Larry Wall More Quotes From Larry Wall Most of you are familiar with the virtues of a programmer. There are three, of course: laziness, impatience, and hubris. Larry Wall technology three funny 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. Larry Wall language strong problem 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. Larry Wall greatness inspiring giving Laziness is a programmers main virtue. Larry Wall laziness inspiring inspire When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. Larry Wall poor keys doubt 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? Larry Wall shoulders daughter said I've decided I don't want to be a manager. Every time you try to be responsive to your employees, they say you're being reactive and not proactive. And when you try to be proactive, they accuse you of being capricious and arbitrary. So I don't wanna be a manager. Larry Wall arbitrary want trying Perl is worse than Python because people wanted it worse. Larry Wall python wanted people I think it's a new feature. Don't tell anyone it was an accident. Larry Wall requirements computer thinking A journey of a thousand miles continues with the second step. Larry Wall computer journey steps Over the long term, symbiosis is more useful than parasitism. More fun, too. Ask any mitochondria. Larry Wall mitochondria fun long It's easier to make up sayings people like to hear than sayings they like to heed. Larry Wall easier computer people Obviously I was either onto something, or on something. Larry Wall technology funny science 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. Larry Wall annoyed trying people Part of language design is perturbing the proposed feature in various directions to see how it might generalize in the future. Larry Wall design language might If you and I always agree, then one of us is redundant. Larry Wall redundant agree ifs When they first built the University of California at Irvine they just put the buildings in. They did not put any sidewalks, they just planted grass. The next year, they came back and put the sidewalks where the trails were in the grass. Perl is just that kind of language. It is not designed from first principles. Perl is those sidewalks in the grass. Larry Wall california principles years 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. Larry Wall use giving people You can’t change the past. You can’t even change the future, in the sense that you can only change the present one moment at a time, stubbornly, until the future unwinds itself into the stories of our lives. Larry Wall moments stories past Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. Larry Wall technology real writing
