Quote

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.

Larry Wall

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Larry Wall
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: September 27
Computer Scientist
Engineer
Linguist
Programmer
Writer
LA
California
TimToady
Larry Arnold Wall
Impossible
Define
Language
George
Newspeak
Ends
Fallen
Orwell
Many
Scientist
Trap
Trying
Killing
Traps
Think
Computer
Languages
Thinking
Creativity
Programming
Like
Thoughts
Scientists

More quotes by Larry Wall

Image
To Perl , or not to Perl, that is the kvetching.
Larry Wall
Image
We're really serious about reinventing everything that needs reinventing.
Larry Wall
Image
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
Image
Symmetry is overrated. Overrated is symmetry.
Larry Wall
Image
We don't have enough parallel universes to allow all uses of all junction types - in the absence of quantum computing the combinatorics are not in our favor.
Larry Wall
Image
If any ideology is so serious that you can't have fun while you're doing it, it's probably too serious.
Larry Wall
Image
As a linguist, I don't think of Ada as a big language. Now, English and Japanese, those are big languages. Ada is just a medium-sized language.
Larry Wall
Image
The computer should be doing the hard work. That's what it's paid to do, after all.
Larry Wall
Image
What you'll need most is courage. It is not an easy path that you've set your foot upon.
Larry Wall
Image
Doing linear scans over an associative array is like trying to club someone to death with a loaded Uzi.
Larry Wall
Image
A lazy person will try to always find some way to do something they'll always be looking for ways of doing something faster, more efficiently, and if you really want to control the world, that's a really sort of hubristic notion - excessive pride, the thing that Zeus zaps you for having.
Larry Wall
Image
Think of prototypes as a funny markup language--the interpretation is left up to the rendering engine.
Larry Wall
Image
Computer language design is just like a stroll in the park. Jurassic Park, that is.
Larry Wall
Image
Would you trust the linguistic intuitions of someone who has been studying Latin or Greek for three days?
Larry Wall
Image
I talked about becoming stupid, but I've always been stupid. Fortunately I've been just smart enough to realize that I'm stupid.
Larry Wall
Image
And I don't like doing silly things (except on purpose).
Larry Wall
Image
Sometimes I wish I could put an expiration date on my quotes.
Larry Wall
Image
For me, writing is a love-hate relationship.
Larry Wall
Image
I'm never satisfied because I've been always interested in too many things and I always want to do everything at once.
Larry Wall
Image
I think it's a new feature. Don't tell anyone it was an accident.
Larry Wall