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Interview: Larry Wall

linuxvoice.com

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Re: Interview: Larry Wall

#91

Post by aidenn0 »

fezz wrote: post #19
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 ?

That shirt is a metaphorical representation of Perl's visual style. Guido van Rossum would wear this shirt: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_zqFoq3qej2c/SJM4eDsnzII/AAAAAAAAR8...

It's a great metaphor when I can say "I bet it's a Piet Mondrian shirt" before clicking on the link.

Re: Interview: Larry Wall

#92

Post by VLM »

xorcist wrote: post #85
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 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.

Its generational.

The first generation of the web was its short simple text, and it has URL links. You need a language for short simple text reports. In the 90s, that was Perl, it probably still is today.

Several generations of the web have happened since then, the graphics art generation came and went (the web should be programmed entirely in WYSIWYG frontpage or the web should be nothing but downloaded adobe flash animations) and now we're into the program generation (the web should be cascading classes and object oriented frameworks and infinitely complicated architectures)

I think you can wedge a simple text reporting language into the later generations but its going to be more difficult than using that language to generate simple text reports that happen to have some html entities sprinkled in.

MOOSE is a pretty awesome OO system for perl, and Mojolicious is pretty good, but its not realistic to dethrone RoR or javascript frameworks with Perl.

Perl6 could be positioned for the next generation of the web, whatever that ends up being, after the programming generation.

Re: Interview: Larry Wall

#93

Post by a3n »

aidenn0 wrote: post #90
esaym wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Executable whiteboard."

Re: Interview: Larry Wall

#94

Post by derplederple »

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?

If you are using Perl code golf jokes as your basis for imagining what Perl code looks like, then this is incorrect. Yes there are a few annoyances with special variables and yes this makes it very easy to write things that will be hard for other people to read, but I really think people that write things like that are doing it on purpose.

The documentation for the various intricacies of Perl 6 has gotten much better, at least IMO from Perl 5, and most of the more interesting aspects of the language are just slightly augmented existing ones.

Re: Interview: Larry Wall

#95

Post by rrss1122 »

greglindahl wrote: post #33
rrss1122 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started out learning Perl. This was when 5.10 was the newest version which was pretty much forever ago. I just went to look up Perl 5.10 release notes, and they billed it as "the first major upgrade... in over five years." http://dev.perl.org/perl5/news/2007/perl-5.10.0.html I would have loved to keep using Perl in a professional setting but even when I first learned it, it was already forever between two major upd…

That was the nadir of perl releases. Starting in 2010, they've released a new major version each year. The first serious perl compiler was just released a week ago: http://rperl.org/ Some people moved on, some people stayed.

I hope with Perl 6, some people will also come back.

Re: Interview: Larry Wall

#96

Post by rrauenza »

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…

I have it firsthand he dressed that way prior to Berkeley. It's just Larry.

Re: Interview: Larry Wall

#97

Post by cpach »

rrauenza wrote: post #96
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…

I have it firsthand he dressed that way prior to Berkeley. It's just Larry.

Cool!

Re: Interview: Larry Wall

#98

Post by rurban »

greglindahl wrote: post #33
rrss1122 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started out learning Perl. This was when 5.10 was the newest version which was pretty much forever ago. I just went to look up Perl 5.10 release notes, and they billed it as "the first major upgrade... in over five years." http://dev.perl.org/perl5/news/2007/perl-5.10.0.html I would have loved to keep using Perl in a professional setting but even when I first learned it, it was already forever between two major upd…

That was the nadir of perl releases. Starting in 2010, they've released a new major version each year. The first serious perl compiler was just released a week ago: http://rperl.org/ Some people moved on, some people stayed.

How do come to the opinion that rperl is the first "serious perl compiler"? It certainly is not.

Re: Interview: Larry Wall

#99

Post by rurban »

petemc_ wrote: post #18
melling wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that 8 points was enough. Well, it's off to the races. People should remember Perl programmers sleep late and live on the West Coast. Nothing before 1pm EST. Let the Perl reminiscing commence. Also, the warning as to why you should never start over. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

There's a reasonable contingent in Japan.

But they are switching to ruby, go and Java in an alarming rate.

Re: Interview: Larry Wall

#100

Post by fezz »

aidenn0 wrote: post #91
fezz wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That shirt is a metaphorical representation of Perl's visual style. Guido van Rossum would wear this shirt: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_zqFoq3qej2c/SJM4eDsnzII/AAAAAAAAR8...

It's a great metaphor when I can say "I bet it's a Piet Mondrian shirt" before clicking on the link.

and coincidentally both are dutch :)
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