Ask Larry Wall 633
About what? Perl is probably a good topic choice. No one knows more about Perl than Larry Wall, right? We'll send 10 of the highest-moderated questions to Larry by email, and post his answers when we get them back. Note: Due to Slashdot's line length restrictions, lines of code over 50 characters long may not display correctly. Please be aware of this if you include code samples in your question.
Rewind and replay (Score:4, Interesting)
It's clear that Perl is undergoing a huge revision now, but even in the midst of this, you have to refrain from straying too far from the existing userbase. What would you do if you didn't have to satisfy those people?
James Joyce (Score:3, Interesting)
No, this is not a Troll! It seems to me that Perl is as much about expressiveness as it is about creating software.
Perl vs J2EE (Score:5, Interesting)
Perl's Roots... (Score:2, Interesting)
Perl as a "scripting" or a "programming" language (Score:4, Interesting)
What do you think about how people are using Perl today? Are you satisfied that most people use it for simple tasks like log parsing? Would you like to see more advanced applications being built with Perl verses a compiled language?
Other linguas? (Score:5, Interesting)
What language do you use when you're not using Perl?
PDHoss
What 10 Q's would you ask yourself? (Score:5, Interesting)
Open source and money (Score:4, Interesting)
Thanks for Perl and the excellent Camel Book. I've been using Perl for 7 years now and am very grateful for having such a tool at my disposal.
Now for the question. Many times people ask the question "Does open source software pay?", and I am under the assumption that it has for you with the profits from the Camel Book and the Perl Resource Kit, etc. So has OSS been profitable for you?
PS, I miss the Hmm..... and other funny comments while applying patches :)
Perl Beginners (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, for the question: Given this approach to learning Perl (just for a general working knowledge, maybe light usage,) is it really worth spending a lot of my time learning Perl now, or should I wait for the big Perl 6 revision?
Thanks
My Question (Score:3, Interesting)
What do you feel about the future of Perl? (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you see Perl moving towards ever being a greater language for "programming" as C++ is? Or is it's place pretty well defined and not moving?
In addition, what do you think about other languages and systems such as the
Structured programming and perl (Score:5, Interesting)
Thus I worry that perl has Python-envy. I've tried to use python several times but always go back to perl. The reason is my daily need for a parser dominates my choice of language and maintains my fluency, since I dont want to have to be fluent in both, perl becomes my language of choice for advanced tasks too, even though python might be better for strcutrued programming.
So my question is, is perl 6 making make perl a structued language like python? Would it be a good idea if perl did not develop any further for fear of becoming too complicated and thus disorganized. (witness the evolution of java from clean slate to giant mess with intricate redundant libraries half of which are deprecated).
How Object-Oriented is Perl (Score:4, Interesting)
In my experience having the programming language handle the complexities of the object type is just as good as having explicit types like int, float, string, etc. But others disagree. And, I'm sure that by creating packages that call other packages, inheritance can be simulated. Others would disagree with this as well.
Additionally, the people who criticize Perl's object-orientedness claim that Object-Oriented programming is "bolted on" to Perl, and therefore is somehow unnatural compared to a language like Java which is built to be object-oriented from the ground up.
How would you answer these critics, and how well does Perl in fact support Object-Oriented Programming, in your opinion?
Python and Ruby (Score:3, Interesting)
Why Perl? (Score:3, Interesting)
Poem (Score:3, Interesting)
What's your favorite Perl poem?
Cheers,
b&
P.S. Thanks for creating something as wonderful as Perl! b&
Languages in general (Score:4, Interesting)
I know that you are an amateur linguist, since you originally wanted to be a missionary, and I was just wondering what other languages that you know and how they influenced your design of perl. I believe that you mentioned in the Camel that Greek was one of the languages that you drew from, and I was just wondering about the others you used, and why you chose them.
Thanks!
5 Changes (Score:4, Interesting)
Perl Funding (Score:2, Interesting)
What about Ruby and PHP? (Score:1, Interesting)
So Larry, it's pretty clear to me and all my collegues that Ruby [ruby-lang.org] and PHP [php.net] are gradually taking over everything that is currently written in Perl. What are your thoughts on the inevitable short lifespan Perl now has?
These are serious issues Larry. Just the other day I saw an IBM job listing for "Perl/Ruby Programmer needed."
language comparison (Score:3, Interesting)
what next now? (Score:4, Interesting)
What will you *not* put into Perl 6? (Score:5, Interesting)
perl vs other languages (Score:5, Interesting)
What are your thoughts on these other scripting languages? What do you like about them, what do you dislike?
Perl Class? (Score:5, Interesting)
grep,sed,awk vs. perl (Score:1, Interesting)
Why Perl? (Score:4, Interesting)
Larry, my question to you is why should I use PERL over Python for system administration? Why should I use PERL over PHP for web content? What do you think that PERL is best suited for?
Perl and .NET (Score:5, Interesting)
Concurrent/Distributed tasks (Score:2, Interesting)
One of the limitations that I have found on Perl is
its lack of modern concurrent processing support in
the form of a standard stable threads package (yes, there is ithreads) or some way to make Perl modules execute and comunicate remotely (nope, rsh* won't do, neither is SOAP the solution)
More and more other languages are providing mechanisms or libraries of modules that are standard in their distribututions.
I would like to know what kind of ideas you would have in this area. Do you think that Perl needs to
have this capability as a standard component?
Thanks for all the fun!
Missionaries (Score:4, Interesting)
I hear that Mr. Wall once wanted to be a missionary translator but that a chronic health problem prevented him from going someplace foreign. I further hear that missionary translators use Perl a lot.
Has he heard any cool stories about how missionaries use Perl?
Would he ever want to do a short-term missionary gig?
How is his health nowadays?
Dear Larry: Are you crazy? (Score:3, Interesting)
From a project managers prospective ... (Score:4, Interesting)
PERL, XP, and test-driven development (Score:4, Interesting)
Considering that XP is a "high-discipline, low formality" methodology, how do you think XP and Perl fit together? How would you go about doing test-driven development in Perl? Is Perl a good language for XP?
-Peter
Issues left in Perl6? (Score:4, Interesting)
Are there any issues in Perl that will not be fixed in Perl6? By an "issue" I mean an aspect of the language that is being widely critized and is admittedly suboptimally implemented, like the current OO implementation.
Application (Score:2, Interesting)
creative muse (Score:2, Interesting)
Role of Religion? (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember reading at some point that you are a
Christian, and there have been suggestions that
some of your early missionary impulses (a desire
to do good, help others) are perhaps part of the
zeal you have put into Perl over the years.
Preferring a scientific view, I am not religious,
and have no desire to be. Perhaps there is a
God, but if there is, I think he/she has no
opposable thumbs; in other words, has no power to
change anything; reality is just playing out
according to the laws of physics (whatever those
are).
Please tell us how in the world a scientific or
at least technical mind can believe in God,
and what role religion has played in your
work on Perl.
Thanks for doing this interview, and thanks
for Perl!
Thanks Larry (Score:5, Interesting)
Like many others, I *love* Perl. I use it both professionally and personally. You've not only helped make my career, but also given me a very pleasent past-time. I was wondering what I can do to say thank-you? Can we give you money? Dontate something to someone, etc.?
When the new Programming Perl came out, I didn't really need anymoe (viva perldoc!), but wanted to make sure I was putting a few bucks in the pockets of those who made Perl great. What else can I do to say thanks?
-Bill
perl 6 niche (Score:5, Interesting)
Perl 6 on the other hand, changes this formula around; favoring a more general solution that potentially reduces performance (due to abstractions), and deviates substantially from the UNIX-family-syntax - Namely: c-ish-syntax ( colon, question mark, select, exception-handling, etc), awk/sedish reg-ex's, raw c-libray-wrappers, etc. It was these very similarities that made learning and accepting perl so trivial since learning CIS and UNIX administration was sufficient to master perl in 2 days.
My question is: does perl 6 have a niche in mind? Or is it spreading itself too thinly; competing more and more against Java/python/C# and thus losing it's identifiable niche?
Favourite Quote? (Score:5, Interesting)
Perl as culture (Score:2, Interesting)
How to get people to take Perl seriously (Score:4, Interesting)
The high-level technical people in my company don't take Perl seriously. They see it as some kind of super-Awk or an artifact of the early days of the web. Smart people know better, but we're not in charge.
What do you think it would take to get people to take Perl seriously as a programming language [again]? Is widespread use of Perl a goal of yours, or do you not care?
Linguistics and Perl (Score:2, Interesting)
Faith (Score:4, Interesting)
Your perfect computer language .. (Score:2, Interesting)
PLEASE ANSWER (Score:2, Interesting)
NOTE TO [STUPID] MODERATORS: This is not a troll. This is serious. Think about it.
Perl 6 Linguistics (Score:1, Interesting)
Perl and Ruby (Score:5, Interesting)
At that time, there was no credible competition to Perl in any of the niches it basically created. These days, there is more competition than I can comfortably list. Indeed, if I were choosing a language like Perl today, I would be very, very tempted to choose Ruby instead, and I am not the only Perl programmer who feels this way. Interestingly, Perl6 is beginning to look and feel a lot more like Ruby. Are there indeed aspects of Ruby that you were deliberately trying to have in Perl6? Are there any aspects of Ruby you are especially wary of?
Best language? (Score:3, Interesting)
He'd screw it up (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't know why Perl wants to be a kitchen-sink language designed to fill any programming role. It is ignoring Perl's strengths to try to do and be everything to everyone. What struck me about the parent post was that just last night I was trying to decide whether Perl would have taken off like it did if it had looked like what Perl 6 will look like. I don't think it would have.
Perl is The Clampetts of programming languages.
-B
The coming "Age of Virtual Machines" (Score:2, Interesting)
Traditionally, computer programming languages have competed against one another, but now we seem to be moving towards a world in which a programmer will be able to choose from a set of virtual machines (VM's) as well as from a set of programming languages. The Perl 6 VM (dubbed "Parrot?") can execute Java source-code (because Java source can be compiled into Perl 6 bytecode) as well as Perl source-code, and, indeed, almost any programming language can be compiled into Perl 6 bytecode. The same is roughly true of Java. Because the source-code of nearly any programming language can be compiled into Java bytecode, a JVM can execute code written in nearly any programming language provided that a compiler has been written to transform the source code into Java bytecode. Examples of such compilers include Jython [jython.org] (which compiles Python source-code into Java bytecode), NetRexx [ibm.com] (which compiles Rexx into Java bytecode), and JRuby [sourceforge.net]. And, of course, there is Microsoft's .Net, which, IIRC, also contemplates (or at least permits?) the compilation of nearly any source-code into a bytecode specified by MS (of course, MS wants the bytecode's execution to take place on a MS O/S exclusively). Furthermore, there's no reason (that I can think of) that would prevent, say, Java or Perl from being compiled into Python bytecode and executed by a Python VM.
There are many implications and consequences of giving software developers this degree of choice. In your opinion, what are the most significant of these consequences?
Perl 6 naming (Score:2, Interesting)
In retrospect do you think a new name or version nomenclature would have warmed the reception and/or reduced confusion?
faster loading times (Score:5, Interesting)
scripts. Both to speedup loading times and to byte-[en]code to program.
There is perlcc, which really isn't supported as a production tool and doesn't take
modules into account.
What do you think about technologies like Zend [zend.com]?
Is this really a issue for perl? or just a matter of time?
CM process preference when developing in a group (Score:3, Interesting)
or
change, test, commit, merge?
Are you a locker or a merger?
Do you USE Perl? (Score:4, Interesting)
Christianity (Score:5, Interesting)
As a fellow Christian (I'm sure that revelation won't get me mod points) I must say that I have really appreciated your 'State of the Onion' speeches over the years. Thanks for showing that Christians can think and that we don't all mindlessly follow a 'televangelist' religion.
Now for the question:
Why do you think that the geek/tech community is so anti-Christian and what can we do to help change their negative stereotypes of Christians? Why is it that so many in this community feel that being a 'Thinking Christian' is an oxymoron? People like Knuth and yourself show that Christians can think and make contributions in the technical world.
I tend to believe that the anti-Christian bias has some justification - meaning that Christians have often not displayed the grace which the Founder displayed and taught us to live in. What is it that Ghandi said when asked about Christianity? "Christianity I like, but it's those Christians that I'm not sure about". I also suspect that the anti-intellectualism of the pop-televangelists that is unfortunately so visible bears much of the blame (often when I come across one of those so-called Christian TV shows I think I'm looking at some kind of religious mutation and when I realize that these folks claim to believe the same things I do, I wince).
Garbage collection (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Dear Larry: Are you crazy? (Score:3, Interesting)
The old syntaxes for Perl are not going anywhere. By introducing new syntaxes, Larry is making Perl syntax twice as complex. It is already known as a syntactically complex language.
If this quote isn't entirely ontopic for this discussion, it certainly is for Perl as a whole:
Not only didn't Larry make up his mind the first time around, but now that the creation has settled he's changing it all over again.New Life Church (Score:3, Interesting)
What's it like for a celebrity to be a part of a community of Christians? Do you pass the collection plate and hand out programs before service starts like any other member, or do you get the celebrity treatment there, as well? I guess I'm asking how deep and intrusive into your life this celebrity stuff goes.
Keep it up, I appreciate it, and the world needs more Christian heros!
Compiling? (Score:1, Interesting)
Very high level languages like Perl are far easier to program in than lower level languages like C and C++. No worries about memory allocation, array sizes, easy string manipluation and so on...
But of all the software currently running on your desktop, probably none of it is written in Perl. Why? Because Perl cannot be truly compiled. Sure, using perlcc [perldoc.com] I can convert a Perl program to C, but this is still experimental and doesn't really work well. Systems like Perl2Exe [indigostar.com] and Activestate's Perl Dev Kit [activestate.com] that package the perl compiler and program into an executable are an improvement, but the resulting executables are large and have a high start-up time.
I'm sure there will be some people who don't consider this problem: i.e. leave Perl on the server-side and for general sysadmin tasks, as C and C++ have already got the desktop sewn up, but just think how much easier and faster it would be to develop a program like a GUI FTP client in Perl.
If there was a true Perl compiler, Perl could easily become the language of choice for many if not all GUI applications. Currently the only end-user targeted GUI app I have seen written in Perl is UploadAway [uploadaway.com]--and even this is hardly aimed at a mainstream audience.
Improving Perl's documentation (Score:2, Interesting)
The basic POD format used for Perl's documentation is too simplistic, providing no support for tables.
It is not possible to obtain high quality print documentation either--sure, a man page can be converted to PostScript, but the result still doesn't look very professional. This node on PerlMonks [perlmonks.org] also discusses these issues for anyone who is interested.
So, do you consider Perl's documentation to be a limitation to its more widespread acceptance? Could you use your considerable influence in the Perl world to start a new drive towards improving documentation?
Serious question (Score:2, Interesting)
Note to moderators: This is a serious question. You may disagree with what is said, but your disagreement does not make this question one that should be ignored. Please don't think that Larry Wall is fragile and needs to be shielded from confrontive questions. Note also that this question needs to be phrased in several ways to make its breadth fully clear.
Larry, now that you have seen what Perl has become after all the excellent work and all the years of effort, was Perl a good idea? Did we need another language? Would it have been better to have added features to an existing language, and to have made a more capable C++ interpreter, an advanced CInt [root.cern.ch], for example?
Now that Perl is a mature, full-featured language, do you think it is a properly designed language? When you first worked on Perl, did you imagine what it would eventually become? It was an easy language to learn then, and that was one of its advantages. Has Perl, now that it is mature, become just another language, with the exception that it is an interpreter? Are there any features of Perl that could not be added to C or C++? Are there features of Perl that were designed to make it easy, like implicit variables, that are not a good idea for a mature language? What are the features of Perl that make it a necessary addition to the numerous languages?
Re:Perl and .NET (Score:4, Interesting)
From looking at perl 6, it really and honestly seems to me like the perl 6 team is trying to position itself as a competitor to
Is this an accurate assessment? Was perl 6 meant to be a "better" CLR, and are you people intending to market it as such? If so, do you think that perl 6 could seriously compete with the
Can it be honestly said that perl 6 is a threat to
Aikido and Perl (Score:3, Interesting)
First, many thanks for Perl, which has saved me much anguish.
I know you're an aikidoka [yahoo.com], and after studying aikido for a year, I've come to see several similarities between aikido and Perl. For example, Perl gives you a nice feeling of blending with the problem instead of struggling directly against it, just as you blend with and redirect your attacker's energy rather than directly confronting it in aikido. Similarly, TMTOWTDI ("there's more than one way to do it") in aikido as well as in Perl (at least in my dojo, where understanding and reaching the goal is more important than slavishly copying the sensei).
My question is, did you consciously approach Perl with aikido in mind (or vice versa :-)? Or is it just that they both appeal to your personality in the same way?
Also, incidentally, what style of aikido do you practice?
most obfuscated.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Your successor (Score:3, Interesting)
The open source movement hasn't been around long enough for us to witness the transition to a new top dog in a worldwide, highly visible project, so we all have to wonder sometimes what will happen when you and Linus decide to pass the baton, and how it will be handled. Have you decided what has to happen for you to retire from the Perl project? Or do you think you'll be hanging in there at 75 and above, a John Lee Hooker of programming languages, until the day you flop over your keyboard? Do you think that you'll hand over the scepter to a successor at the pinnacle, or do you think Perl can be taken over by some kind of committee? Doesn't there have to be an individual who has final say on important and possibly controversial decisions? Do you think the developer community will accept a new leader on your sayso, or will there have to be some sort of election? And if you do consider choosing a successor, what will your criteria be?
BTW, I'm an atheist, but I hope you don't mind my saying God bless you for creating Perl.
Parrot as a good VM? (Score:3, Interesting)
He claimed the design of Parrot was fundamentally flawed and pointed to it's highly unusual design and the very high number of opcodes. I was wondering exactly what you're thoughts are on Parrot. It's claimed that it'll be a good target for any language, both static and dynamic, but are you really interested in pushing this? Could you see Parrot as worthy competition to .NET in the cross-language VM space? Is having a very large number of opcodes an advantage or a disadvantage?
ease of installation for Perl apps (Score:3, Interesting)
But a bigger issue for me as a Perl app writer has been ease of installation. Is this going to get better in Perl 6? Installing a Perl app can be a fairly complex process, especially if you need lots of CPAN modules, and a lot of them call C code that needs to be compiled. Also, there seems to be a general assumption that modules are going to be installed in /usr, but many end-users might not have the privs to do that. None of this is a big deal in the world of sysadmins and webmasters, but for naive end-users it's a problem. Will the advent of Parrot make it possible to give the user a big ol' bytecode file that includes everything? I know it's going to become easier to glue C and Perl together -- will this translate into an easier exeprience for the end-user as well?
I guess I'm just spoiled by the MacOS X experience, where an application appears as an icon in the Finder, and to intstall it, all you do is drag it to the Applications folder. Wow! Java also does a good job of streamlining the installation process, although it's at the cost of making the standard library ridiculously huge.
Home Automation (Score:2, Interesting)
Begging to differ (Score:3, Interesting)
Perl's philosophy is largely a complement of this sentiment. This kind of thinking was in vogue for a long time, and Perl's bucking of the trend was (largely) responsible for its popularity.
Perl advanced the notion that syntax is not a byproduct of grammar. It should not be an orthogonal representation of the language's capabilities. It is important that the concatenation operator be one or two characters. A language is for humans to use; it should reflect how humans think. Give the computer the tedious job of normalizing that input, and spare the human's cycles for more important things.
Read the Apocalypses, or Larry's intro to the ORA books, or the Exegeseses(es?). You'll note artifacts of this philosophy everywhere, including in a discussion of original complaint, anonymous character classes: Unicode makes unnamed character ranges less of a Right Thing than before. And with real set operators for named classes (you can say Word Characters and Whitespace but not Digits), they're a lot less necessary. They're still in there, but it's a couple extra characters to reflect their diminished relevance.
There are some that disagree with this thinking, but I'd question what attracted them to the language in the first place.