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March 13, 2006

Perl, according to Larry Wall himself

I started off liking programming because I could usually make the computer do cool things like animate a shape or play a neat tune. However, Perl was the first language in which I had fun writing code for its own sake. I really liked Perl's natural language antecedents and the TMTOWDTI philosophy; I continue to be fascinated by Perl and other languages inspired by Perl, such as Ruby. Perl may have originally stood for Practical Extraction and Reporting Language but it can do so much more. In fact, I am a bit scared by how much critical infrastructure at large companies depends on Perl, especially considering a quip I noticed in the main Perl manual page today, from Larry Wall himself:

Perl actually stands for Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister, but don't tell anyone I said that.

Posted by Vishy at March 13, 2006 10:25 PM

Comments

Posted by: Karolina at March 16, 2006 10:54 PM