LARRY WALL

If any ideology is so serious that you can't have fun while you're doing it, it's probably too serious.

I think software patents are a bad idea. Many patents are given for trivial inventions.

There is no schedule. We are all volunteers, so we get it done when we get it done. Perl 5 still works fine, and we plan to take the right amount of time on Perl 6.

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.

For me, writing is a love-hate relationship.

I think operating systems work best if they're free and open. Particular applications are more likely to be proprietary.

Somebody out there is going to do something that's far more surprising than anything that I would do. I was surprised by the whole web thing in the first place.

Some of modern engineering is necessary to good art. But I think of myself is a cultural artist.

I think the way IBM has embraced the open source philosophy has been quite astonishing, but gratifying. I hope they'll do very well with it.

We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on when it's necessary to compromise.

I talked about becoming stupid, but I've always been stupid. Fortunately I've been just smart enough to realize that I'm stupid.

Younger hackers are hard to classify. They're probably just as diverse as the old hackers are. We're all over the map.

Perl was designed to work more like a natural language. It's a little more complicated but there are more shortcuts, and once you learned the language, it's more expressive.

Real programmers can write assembly code in any language.

Doing linear scans over an associative array is like trying to club someone to death with a loaded Uzi.

Programmers can be lazy.

To be a good artist, you have to serve the work of art and allow it to be what it is supposed to be.

I'm just paid to do whatever I want to do. Some of the time it's development, and some of the time it's just goofing off.

Many days I don't write any code at all, and some days I spend all day writing code.

One of the very basic ideas of Post-Modernism is rejection of arbitrary power structures. Different people are sensitive to different kinds of power structures.

When I announced the development of Perl 6, I said it was going to be a community design. I designed Perl, myself. It's limited by my own brain power. So I wanted Perl 6 to be a community design.

I want people to use Perl. I want to be a positive ingredient of the world and make my American history. So, whatever it takes to give away my software and get it used, that's great.

We are so Post-Modern that we don't realize how Post-Modern we are anymore.

Hubris itself will not let you be an artist.

I am not a sort of person who wants to run a company.