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Almost nothing in Perl serves a single purpose.

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
Perl
Serves
Single
Almost
Purpose
Nothing

More quotes by 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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The autodecrement is not magical.
Larry Wall
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In general, they do what you want, unless you want consistency.
Larry Wall
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Symmetry is overrated. Overrated is symmetry.
Larry Wall
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As someone pointed out, you could have an attribute that says 'optimize the heck out of this routine', and your definition of heck would be a parameter to the optimizer.
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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This does not mean that some of us should not want, in a rather dispassionate sort of way, to put a bullet through csh's head.
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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I don't believe I've ever cuddled my elses.
Larry Wall
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Natural languages generally are not designed by humans, they're just designed by the participants and you say something new and somebody else says, Oh, that's a cool way to say it, and the next thing you know, everyone is saying it because it's shiny.
Larry Wall
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It is my job in life to travel all roads, so that some may take the road less travelled, and others the road more travelled, and all have a pleasant day.
Larry Wall
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Think of prototypes as a funny markup language--the interpretation is left up to the rendering engine.
Larry Wall
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The purpose of most computer languages is to lengthen your resume by a word and a comma.
Larry Wall
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Information doesn't want to be free. Information wants to be valuable.
Larry Wall
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It's hard to tune heavily tuned code.
Larry Wall
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The Harvard Law states: Under controlled conditions of light, temperature, humidity, and nutrition, the organism will do as it damn well pleases.
Larry Wall
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Laziness is a programmers main virtue.
Larry Wall
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Post-Modernism was a reaction against Modernism. It came quite early to music and literature, and a little later to architecture. And I think it's still coming to computer science.
Larry Wall
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The problems that I really like to solve are our cultural problems.
Larry Wall
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You don't have to know the whole language to use it usefully, you can do baby talk, you can do grown up talk, you can cuss in it, you can write poetry, you can be a playwright, is sort of the idea.
Larry Wall