Computer languages differ not so much in what they make possible, but in what they make easy. 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 technologythreefunny 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 languagestrongproblem 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 greatnessinspiringgiving Laziness is a programmers main virtue. Larry Wall lazinessinspiringinspire When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. Larry Wall poorkeysdoubt 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 shouldersdaughtersaid 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 arbitrarywanttrying Perl is worse than Python because people wanted it worse. Larry Wall pythonwantedpeople I think it's a new feature. Don't tell anyone it was an accident. Larry Wall requirementscomputerthinking A journey of a thousand miles continues with the second step. Larry Wall computerjourneysteps Over the long term, symbiosis is more useful than parasitism. More fun, too. Ask any mitochondria. Larry Wall mitochondriafunlong It's easier to make up sayings people like to hear than sayings they like to heed. Larry Wall easiercomputerpeople Obviously I was either onto something, or on something. Larry Wall technologyfunnyscience 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 annoyedtryingpeople Part of language design is perturbing the proposed feature in various directions to see how it might generalize in the future. Larry Wall designlanguagemight If you and I always agree, then one of us is redundant. Larry Wall redundantagreeifs 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 californiaprinciplesyears 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 usegivingpeople 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 momentsstoriespast Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. Larry Wall technologyrealwriting
