Larry Wall Quotes

Save it for my unauthorized autobiography.

Being famous has its benefits, but fame isn't one of them.

Yes, but I did manage to increase the amount of virginity in the world by that method.

Just because you're into control doesn't mean you're in control.

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.

What about writing it first and rationalizing it afterwards?

[Perl] gives you the STDERR filehandle so that your program can make snide comments off to the side while it transforms (or attempts to transform) your input into your output.

Well, I think Perl should run faster than C.

If you consistently take an antagonistic approach, however, people are going to start thinking you're from New York.

I think I'm likely to be certified before Perl is.

I'm sorry, but you just made me lose my sense of humor, which is deeply regrettable.

If you write something wrong enough, I'll be glad to make up a new witticism just for you.

There's often more than one correct thing. There's often more than one right thing. There's often more than one obvious thing.

Perhaps I'm missing the gene for making enemies.

Not that I'm against sneaking some notions into people's heads upon occasion. (Or blasting them in outright.

[Boxed] Multiple bouncing balls in a box are a metaphor for community. Notice how the escaping balls explode. This is what happens to people who move from Perl to Ruby.

Besides, REAL computers have a rename system call.

I won't mention any names, because I don't want to get sun4's into trouble.

Sometimes I wish I could put an expiration date on my quotes.

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.

Almost nothing in Perl serves a single purpose.

If you want your program to be readable, consider supplying the argument.

The court finds everyone to be in contempt (including himself :-), and orders everyone sentenced to five years hard labor. (Working on Perl, of course.)

To Perl , or not to Perl, that is the kvetching.

I think that's easier to read. Pardon me. Less difficult to read.

Perl has a long tradition of working around compilers.

The trouble with being quoted a lot is that it makes other people think you're quoting yourself when in fact you're merely repeating yourself.

I don't like this official/unofficial distinction. It sound, er, officious.

I think I'll side with the pissheads on this one.

If you're going to define a shortcut, then make it the base [sic] darn shortcut you can.

Wow, I'm being shot at from both sides. That means I *must* be right.

To ordinary folks, conversion is not always automatic. It's something that may or may not require explicit assistance. See Billy Graham.

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.

"Lurking" is one metaphor that the Omniscience has allowed us to borrow.

Historically speaking, the presence of wheels in Unix has never precluded their reinvention.

The potential of greater good goes right along with the potential for greater evil.

Even the White House has a press agent.

I suppose you could switch grammars once you've seen 'use strict subs'.

So please don't think I have a 'down' on the MVS people. I'm just pulling off their arms to beat other people over the head with.

Maybe we should take a clue from FTP and put in an option like 'print hash marks on every 1024 iterations'.

Perhaps you should compile your Perl with long doubles one of these megaseconds.

Well, you know, Hubbard had a bunch of people sworn to commit suicide when he died. So of course he never officially died.

It's hard to tune heavily tuned code.

The computer should be doing the hard work. That's what it's paid to do, after all.

Reserve your abuse for your true friends.

Well, hey, let's just make everything into a closure, and then we'll have our general garbage collector, installed by 'use less memory'.

We're really serious about reinventing everything that needs reinventing.

Though I'll admit readability suffers slightly.

You can't have filenames longer than 14 chars. You can't even think about them!

When's the last time you used duct tape on a duct?