Larry Wall Quotes

Now, it's my belief that Python is a lot easier than to teach to students programming and teach them C or C++ or Java at the same time because all the details of the languages are so much harder. Other scripting languages really don't work very well there either.

The main languages out of which web applications are built - whether it's Perl or Python or PHP or any of the other languages - those are all open source languages. So the infrastructure of the web is open source... the web as we know it is completely dependent on open source.

I wanted to make an explicitly educational comic that taught readers the concepts I covered in my introductory programming class. That's what 'Secret Coders' is. It's both a fun story about a group of tweens who discover a secret coding school, and an explanation of some foundational ideas in computer science.

Any good software engineer will tell you that a compiler and an interpreter are interchangeable.

The truth has never been of any real value to any human being - it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

Programming is usually taught by examples.

We live in a world where we don't really hear ideas. We just hear propaganda. That's not just boring. It's also very dangerous.

James Edward Oliver might have been one of the great mathematicians of his time had he not been absolutely wanting in the power of continuous work.

The physicists defer only to mathematicians, and the mathematicians defer only to God.

Some humans are mathematicians-others aren't.

The computers are not replacing mathematicians; they are breeding them.

[John Wheeler] rejuvenated general relativity; he made it an experimental subject and took it away from the mathematicians

Mathematicians practice absolute freedom.

[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.

Some of you may have met mathematicians and wondered how they got that way.

There's many scripting languages in the world, Perl is a little bit special because it is based more on some ideas from the way natural languages work.

Unfortunately, the world has not been designed for the convenience of mathematicians.

Computer programming is really a lot like writing a recipe. If you've read a recipe, you know what the structure of a recipe is, it's got some things up at the top that are your ingredients, and below that, the directions for how to deal with those ingredients.

[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.

I am not interested in what today's mathematicians find interesting.

Nobody listens to mathematicians.

In my experience most mathematicians are intellectually lazy.

The mathematicians know a great deal about very little and the physicists very little about a great deal.

Perl is worse than Python because people wanted it worse.