Larry Wall
Programmer, best known as the creator of the Perl programming language.
Suppose you went back to Ada Lovelace and asked her the difference between a script and a program. She'd probably look at you funny, then say something like: Well, a script is what you give the actors, but a program is what you give the audience. That Ada was one sharp lady...
Perhaps you should compile your Perl with long doubles one of these megaseconds.
My arthritic pinkies are already starting to ache just thinking about ||||=.
I'm serious about thinking through all the possibilities before we settle on anything. All things have the advantages of their disadvantages, and vice versa.
That which hits the fan tends to get flung in all directions.
Piet van Oostrum: I find this a nice feature but it is not according to the documentation. Or is it a BUG?
Larry Wall: Let's call it an accidental feature. :-)
Perl itself is usually pretty good about telling you what you shouldn't do. :-)
Perl is designed to give you several ways to do anything, so consider picking the most readable one.
You don't have to wait--you can have it in 5.004_54 or so. :-)
Think of prototypes as a funny markup language--the interpretation is left up to the rendering engine.
What is the sound of Perl? Is it not the sound of a wall that people have stopped banging their heads against?
You have to admit that it's difficult to misplace the Perl sources. :-)
Perl has a long tradition of working around compilers.
The three chief virtues of a programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris.
Boss: You forgot to assign the result of your map!
Hacker: Dang, I'm always forgetting my assignations...
Boss: And what's that 'goto' doing there?!?
Hacker: Er, I guess my finger slipped when I was typing 'getservbyport'...
Boss: Ah well, accidents will happen. Maybe we should have picked APL.
I dunno, I dream in Perl sometimes...
Anyway, there's plenty of room for doubt. It might seem easy enough, but computer language design is just like a stroll in the park.
Jurassic Park, that is.
It should be illegal to yell 'Y2K' in a crowded economy. :-)
Though I'll admit readability suffers slightly...
Just don't create a file called -rf. :-)