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Interview: Larry Wall

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Re: Interview: Larry Wall

#81

Post by digitalzombie »

elchief wrote: post #38

Would I be nuts to pick perl over python as my main scripting/server admin language? I am a postgres, openbsd, data/text processing guy. OpenBSD is 40% perl. Postgres uses perl for its builds. Perl seems to have better text processing capabilities. But it seems to be dying out compared to python.

Seems like it's dying out.

For Puppet, Chef and other stuff it's Ruby. Python ate most of it's share in biogenetic. Php took over Perl in web dev.

Python is much more readable in general imo.

Plus whoever taking over your script may have to maintain it and they're most likely to know Python than Perl (if you're looking at language popularity). The counter argument is that any good programmer can pick up languages but there is a down time still.

Re: Interview: Larry Wall

#82

Post by lmm »

vijucat wrote: post #75

While building perl6, you see "-Larry -Wall" as part of the gcc args, which I thought was a clever + syntactically correct joke :-)

One of my friends built a project that included a library called "library". You would link it with -lrary.

It was funny for about 30 seconds and then just frustrating when debugging the build.

Re: Interview: Larry Wall

#83

Post by antod »

elchief wrote: post #38

Would I be nuts to pick perl over python as my main scripting/server admin language? I am a postgres, openbsd, data/text processing guy. OpenBSD is 40% perl. Postgres uses perl for its builds. Perl seems to have better text processing capabilities. But it seems to be dying out compared to python.

With my sysadmin hat on I do have a bias towards scripting languages that ship with the OS. Not increasing the OS/distro footprint is one of my 'things'.

I lean more towards Python these days because of tools like SaltStack and Ansible and great library support, and because it fits my brain better.

So with Linux, I'd probably recommend Python as it is a key part of most distros (like Perl still is too, but eg Ruby isn't). But on OpenBSD Python isn't a key builtin part of the OS while Perl is, so I'd still recommend Perl for an OpenBSD admin.

Re: Interview: Larry Wall

#84

Post by Fede_V »

I have a very charming Larry Wall story. He came to give a seminar to the research center where I was working, and gave a fantastic talk on Perl 6.

Late in the evening, I ran into him and his wife on the bus when getting home from work - and started talking to them. Apparently, nobody from the department had arranged to take them out for dinner, so we ended up going out for dinner together, where we had a fantastic discussion covering religion, tolerance, and lots of other topics. I am a staunch materialist and atheist, while both the Walls are serious committed Christians, but we had a really pleasant discussion on religion and the nature of evidence.

I ended up giving his wife a copy of Hume's Dialogue on Natural Religion, and they were kind enough to sign a copy of the Camel book for a friend who is a huge Perl fan.

A lot of people know Larry by reputation - but his wife Gloria is just as smart and kind. It was a bit of a strange evening, but it was a rare privilege to meet two such interesting people.

Re: Interview: Larry Wall

#85

Post by xorcist »

eliben wrote: post #65
mempko wrote: post #24

I started learning perl 6 to prototype creating a DSL. Holy fucking shit perl grammars and actions are cool.

Yes, but... Perl's greatest criticism is that it's friggin' unreadable, especially when written by less-than-stellar coders. It's my impression from a skim of Perl 6 that due to a bunch of fairly intricate features added there, it will be come even less readable than Perl 5. Is that a mistaken assessment?

I believe it is a reputation from the time when the web coders first scripts tended to be in Perl, because that was what was available server side. They have long since migrated to PHP instead, and Perl written by programmers who learn the language aren't better or worse than anything else.

Re: Interview: Larry Wall

#86

Post by xorcist »

elchief wrote: post #38

Would I be nuts to pick perl over python as my main scripting/server admin language? I am a postgres, openbsd, data/text processing guy. OpenBSD is 40% perl. Postgres uses perl for its builds. Perl seems to have better text processing capabilities. But it seems to be dying out compared to python.

Sure. CPAN is (still) better curated than PyPI, with better testing coverage, and that's important for many common use cases.

Re: Interview: Larry Wall

#87

Post by badpenny »

cpach wrote: post #13
codeshaman wrote: post #8

I love the shirt he's wearing in those pictures. What is it with geeks and psychedelic/hippie outfits ? Is it because of the patterns and colors, eccentricity or because of real involvement with the counterculture/psychedelia ? It's always fascinated and intrigued me. Any people 'in the know' care to elaborate on that ?

Well he attended UC Berkeley in the 1970s, so it’s safe to assume that he has had lots of exposure to hippie culture. There are actually quite strong connections between computer nerds and the counterculture of the 60s/70s. If you’re curious I recommend the following books: # What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry / John Markoff. A great book with many fascinating…

Also Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy.

Re: Interview: Larry Wall

#88

Post by pjmlp »

elchief wrote: post #38

Would I be nuts to pick perl over python as my main scripting/server admin language? I am a postgres, openbsd, data/text processing guy. OpenBSD is 40% perl. Postgres uses perl for its builds. Perl seems to have better text processing capabilities. But it seems to be dying out compared to python.

It depends where you intend to work, most commercial UNIX systems (Aix, ...) are more likely to have Perl than Python installed.

Re: Interview: Larry Wall

#89

Post by cpach »

badpenny wrote: post #87
cpach wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well he attended UC Berkeley in the 1970s, so it’s safe to assume that he has had lots of exposure to hippie culture. There are actually quite strong connections between computer nerds and the counterculture of the 60s/70s. If you’re curious I recommend the following books: # What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry / John Markoff. A great book with many fascinating…

Also Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy.

Yeah, that’s also a great read.

Re: Interview: Larry Wall

#90

Post by aidenn0 »

esaym wrote: post #68
eliben wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but... Perl's greatest criticism is that it's friggin' unreadable, especially when written by less-than-stellar coders. It's my impression from a skim of Perl 6 that due to a bunch of fairly intricate features added there, it will be come even less readable than Perl 5. Is that a mistaken assessment?

I used to have trouble reading the Perl5 code I would write a few weeks later. But these were small scripts I'd write and a month or two would go by before I'd right another one. The issue was I didn't fully know the language. Having spent a few years in Perl 5 now, I no longer have this issue. But the Ruby 1.8 code I wrote 5 years ago I can no longer read, I seem to have forgotten it. I never have been able to read…

To me, Python is so close to pseudocode that I find it very readable. I found and fixed a bug in python code having never before seen any python code. At the time, I only really knew C.
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