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The way I see it, if you declare something portable, you'll always be wrong, and if you declare it non-portable, you'll always be right.

Larry Wall

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Larry Wall
Age: 69
Born: 1954
Born: September 27
Computer Scientist
Engineer
Linguist
Programmer
Writer
LA
California
TimToady
Larry Arnold Wall
Portable
Declare
Wrong
Right
Something
Way
Always

More quotes by Larry Wall

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It's appositival, if it's there. And it doesn't have to be there. And it's really obvious that it's there when it's there.
Larry Wall
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It's hard to tune heavily tuned code.
Larry Wall
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Many days I don't write any code at all, and some days I spend all day writing code.
Larry Wall
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Information doesn't want to be free. Information wants to be valuable.
Larry Wall
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If you and I always agree, then one of us is redundant.
Larry Wall
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Symmetry is overrated. Overrated is symmetry.
Larry Wall
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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
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But I know what's important to me, and what isn't. And I think I know what people can get used to, and what they can even learn to like. (It just takes some people longer than others. :-)
Larry Wall
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I think operating systems work best if they're free and open. Particular applications are more likely to be proprietary.
Larry Wall
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The only reason [not to use] perl is that some sysadmins don't allow software that they didn't pay for. By all means, let them send me money if it makes them feel better.
Larry Wall
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Now, I'm not the only language designer with irrationalities. You can think of some languages to go with some of these things.
Larry Wall
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One operator is no big deal. That can be fixed in a jiffy.
Larry Wall
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Doing linear scans over an associative array is like trying to club someone to death with a loaded Uzi.
Larry Wall
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Well, you know, Hubbard had a bunch of people sworn to commit suicide when he died. So of course he never officially died.
Larry Wall
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The court finds everyone to be in contempt (including himself :-), and orders everyone sentenced to five years hard labor. (Working on Perl, of course.)
Larry Wall
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And besides, if Perl really takes off in the Windows space, I think the rest of us would just as soon have a double-agent within ActiveState.
Larry Wall
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People get annoyed when you try to debug them.
Larry Wall
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Not that I have anything much against redundancy. But I said that already.
Larry Wall
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The young think they are immortal, and are determined to prove otherwise.
Larry Wall
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As pointed out in a followup, Real Perl Programmers prefer things to be visually distinct.
Larry Wall