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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

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

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Perl is worse than Python because people wanted it worse.
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Doing linear scans over an associative array is like trying to club someone to death with a loaded Uzi.
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I think I'm likely to be certified before Perl is.
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Most of you are familiar with the virtues of a programmer. There are three, of course: laziness, impatience, and hubris.
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Historically speaking, the presence of wheels in Unix has never precluded their reinvention.
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To ordinary folks, conversion is not always automatic. It's something that may or may not require explicit assistance. See Billy Graham.
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Information wants to be useful.
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Symmetry is overrated. Overrated is symmetry.
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It's easier to make up sayings people like to hear than sayings they like to heed.
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I think operating systems work best if they're free and open. Particular applications are more likely to be proprietary.
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Many days I don't write any code at all, and some days I spend all day writing code.
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Well, I think Perl should run faster than C.
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You know, I've got my hands in 30 or 40 different pots simultaneously and so I have a little bit of all of that where I work.
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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.
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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.
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I talked about becoming stupid, but I've always been stupid. Fortunately I've been just smart enough to realize that I'm stupid.
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Though I'll admit readability suffers slightly.
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Computer programming is really a lot like writing a recipe. If you've read a recipe, you know what the structure of a recipe is, it's got some things up at the top that are your ingredients, and below that, the directions for how to deal with those ingredients.
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As pointed out in a followup, Real Perl Programmers prefer things to be visually distinct.
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