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Larry Wall's Very Own Home Page
- melling 8y agoLarry’s Perl page is a bit telling: http://www.wall.org/~larry/perl.html http://www.wall.org/~larry/perl.html Perl 6 is still the future of Perl? https://www.perl6.org https://www.perl6.org
- 3rdAccount 8y agoPerl5 definitely isn't the future IMO, but many will point out that neither is Perl6. Perl5's CPAN is still very useful, the language is still available on most UNIX systems, it has some really nice OO modules like Moose, and the community still has lots of conferences and releases regular updates. I personally prefer Python in this space though. Perl6 on the other hand is gorgeous. You can write beautiful OO, FP, imperative...whatever code. Grammars and MOP are great. The parallel support is cool and the Unicode support is top notch. You can also do really cool stuff not normally seen in scripting languages like restrict the type going into a function to be a non-negative integer in the range of 1..10 kind of like in Ada. The downside is that the language is still immature and adoption is slow. The VM is getting better, but with things like Nim, Julia, Crystal(fast languages), Perl6 is a tougher sell.
- okket 8y agoI will never understand why it was not possible to leave Perl5 as Perl and call Perl6 something else, maybe 'Butterfly'. They share very little except their creator.
- darrenf 8y agoOne of the most active Perl 6 contributors made a repeat plea to Larry on the topic of its name just the other day: https://perl6.party/post/A-Request-to-Larry-Wall-to-Create-a-Language-Name-Alias-for-Perl-6 https://perl6.party/post/A-Request-to-Larry-Wall-to-Create-a...
- claydavisss 8y agoAnd it has been mostly rejected by everyone else, just like the first time it was made. This is a silly debate but I suppose Zoffix has contributed enough awesome code to buy himself some credit. In any case, it is Perl6 and changing the name now would be an even bigger mistake.
- rrauenza 8y agoLarry was just discussing this with my wife (the official(?) Perl poet) yesterday. His wife and my wife didn't like the name he proposed. I kinda liked it. I don't feel at liberty to disclose the name, but it might be in the recent irc logs.
- tyingq 8y agoI'd have called it Amber. A natural gemstone, as is a pearl, but takes a lot longer to form :)
- cygx 8y agoThe same reason the spiritual successor to Modula was named Modula-2 by Wirth.
- claydavisss 8y agoNot sure how you see Perl6 and Nim/Crystal as being competitors...they occupy completely different niches. Perl6 is supposed to be a new approach for dynamic scripting languages. Maybe you think stuff like gradual typing means it is trying to compete with systems languages...but I don't even think it is the case that "idiomatic" Perl6 will have a lot of type annotations and I personally don't use them much. I think a better comparison is Racket. Racket is also trying to push the boundaries for dynamic languages. I do not consider Python3 to be a competitor because it seems quite clear that Python3 is not intended to offer up much in the way of fresh thinking, just a cleaned-up Python2 (which is perfectly fine).
- 3rdAccount 8y agoThey are in different niches to a degree, but when you have a language like Nim that is as easy to use as Python, nearly as expressive as Python...etc, then you might go ahead and choose Nim over something like Perl6 as it is so fast and distribution is just a binary. C++ is in a different ballpark than Perl6, but not Nim & Crystal. They overlap to the slower lang's detriment.
- claydavisss 8y agoYou are comparing these tools based on superficial syntactic characteristics and completely missing the dynamic capabilities. You should look at a tool like Perl (5 or 6) much like you would a Lisp - a dynamic system that provides interesting and useful runtime features. I use Perl when I want features like `eval`...or when I want to push data around while delaying evaluating its type. This is why I suggest comparing the Perls to tools like Racket.
- corobo 8y agoOh man I haven't seen geekcode in years
- mjlee 8y agoEven when it was popular, there certainly weren't many people who couldnt legitimately claim P+++++
- moviuro 8y agoAccording to the Code of the Geeks, P+++++ means: I am Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, or Randal Schwartz. So yeah, not many people may claim that.
- dice 8y agoFull decode of the P section is even more amusing: GEEK PERL CODE [P+++++(--)$] My tendencies on this issue range from: "I am Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, or Randal Schwartz.", to: "Perl users are sick, twisted programmers who are just showing off." Getting paid for it!
- schemathings 8y agoSurprised Damian Conway never made that list .. I thought he was sort of heir-apparent at one point
- jedimastert 8y agoAccording to this geek code generator[1], the requirements for "P+++++" are: >I am Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, or Randal Schwartz
- mjlee 8y agos/nt// :(
- probably_wrong 8y agoToo bad the domain is gone. But we still have the archived version: https://archive.fo/zbxk https://archive.fo/zbxk
- lancew 8y ago:-)
- nik736 8y ago> I hate my telephone. Please don't ask for my phone number. Yup, who doesn't :)
- asaph 8y agoI think we hate our telephones more than we used to and I have a theory about why. The time lag between saying something and the other person hearing it is very noticeable on cell phones as compared with landlines. This makes conversations very annoying. Person A will begin speaking and then half a second later, they'll hear Person B "interrupting". Of course Person B didn't know he was interrupting because he hadn't yet heard Person A begin to speak. Then they both stop talking, followed by some dead air. And then they both yield to one another. "No, you go ahead, please". For whatever reason, landlines seem to have lower latentency and this doesn't happen. That and of course there are a zillion more interesting things to do on a smart phone than talk to someone.
- gregmac 8y agoFor me, it's that the telephone demands immediate and synchronous attention. It's the same as someone barging into your house/office, interrupting whatever it is you were doing, and demanding your attention on something entirely different. I think this is also largely why text-based communication is so popular: it's asynchronous. You can send someone a message, they reply when it's convenient. There's very little effort involved as the recipient (compared to say, voicemail or a live conversation). A scheduled or expected voice call is entirely different: it's just an efficient form of communication. I personally would also rather have a 5 or 10 minute phone call than send texts or e-mails back and forth dozens of times over the course of hours or days.
- jacquesm 8y agoI hate it when it starts ringing. My phone is on silent all the time for that reason (lots of missed calls, sorry), and when I'm busy the interruptions greatly irritate me (and I'm always busy).
- 8y ago
- cs02rm0 8y agoI miss sites like this being a greater proportion of the internet. When everything else was just fields... and javascript was to be used as little as possible.
- gpetukhov 8y agoAre you serious? This site looks horrible. And the only reason it's not a pain to navigate is because it has very little content. I definitely don't miss those days of the Web when UI designers were not invited yet.
- mankyd 8y ago> and javascript was to be used as little as possible. You seem to have forgotten about "dhtml". That damned ascii-analog-clock-that-follows-your-mouse still haunts my dreams.
- quirkot 8y agotrigger warning: mouse clocks http://rainbow.arch.scriptmania.com/scripts/mouse_clock.html http://rainbow.arch.scriptmania.com/scripts/mouse_clock.html
- jacobsenscott 8y agoAvast claims there's malware on that site, fwiw.
- beat 8y agoMouse clocks are malware, for sufficiently broad definitions.
- runarb 8y agoLooks like a false positive. Virustotal sees clean: https://www.virustotal.com/en/url/e1aefef6b413b1f232d72c7b37188a8369481c1290596b84e1ed5d112b04d125/analysis/ https://www.virustotal.com/en/url/e1aefef6b413b1f232d72c7b37... (except Dr.Web, but they appear to basically flag everything)
- tempodox 8y agoWow, that background color peels off my retina.
- themodelplumber 8y agoRecurring corneal erosions sufferer checking in. Yeah, this color scheme is not one I'd be spending reading time on during a bad eye day :-)
- tecleandor 8y agoFTA : "I'm also keeping a diary all about my cornea transplant."
- themodelplumber 8y agoWow. Is that linked? I'll check it out. Eye conditions are weird that way, maybe the color really helps him out. I need relatively dark and low-contrast when part of my cornea has just been peeled off :-)
- kzisme 8y agoYup! http://www.wall.org/~larry/cornea.html http://www.wall.org/~larry/cornea.html It's actually a really cool read - I wish he had more stuff posted on his blog to read :(
- egfx 8y agoImagine read this at night on your phone. Instant blindness?
- themodelplumber 8y agoHaha. I couldn't imagine that. If I do any reading in the dark, at night, I'll try to at least yawn a few times, maybe punch myself in the nose, to generate some tears. ;-)
- montenegrohugo 8y agoHis "Web and CGI programming" part cracks me up. I really like this, and hope that at least some part of the web moves towards a similar federated approach (as opposed to having all personal information on other services like FB or LinkedIn etc) Other efforts in this vein: https://indieweb.org/ https://indieweb.org/ And my very own try on a webpage ( I started last week, its even worse than Larry's, please dont judge): http://www.hmontenegro.com http://www.hmontenegro.com
- linuxlizard 8y agoDoesn't have a chartreuse background so +1 :-) (I can't believe I spelled chartreuse right on the first try..)
- linuxlizard 8y agoMuch nicer than my homepage from that era.
- davidscolgan 8y agoOh man, this brings back memories. Larry Wall is a wonderful human who I had the privilege of meeting back in college. He came out for a summer tech conference we were hosting and was the keynote speaker. When we broke out into small groups he was in mine and we chatted a bit. He was the first internet famous person I had ever met - kind and unassuming, and also the creator of something highly successful in the Perl programming language. Perl was one of the original web languages and the Swiss Army knife of scrappy programmers and sysadmins everywhere. It was a direct influence on many more recent programming languages, including Python and Ruby to name a few. My friends and I discovered this very own home page back around the time I met him some 10 years ago. It was where I first learned the word "chartreuse", and I'm still not fully sure what color that refers to. You can find some of his writings under the "My Ravings" section, which are a hoot. One of my favorites of his writings is The Three Virtues of a programmer (http://threevirtues.com/ http://threevirtues.com/): Laziness: The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it. Impatience: The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don't just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to. Hubris: The quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won't want to say bad things about.
- miluge 8y agoChartreuse is a kind of green-ish color, it comes for the drink! Go to France and ask it as a digestif it's great ( but gives me terrible headaches ). And thanks for the three rules maybe now I might explain my manager why my laziness is good
- jmcomets 8y agoChartreuse comes from the Alps (Isère), and was brewed by the monks of the Grande-Chartreuse. The drink's history is pretty interesting to read about[1]. There are actually two kinds of Chartreuse, one green (easiest to find) and one yellow. The recipe supposedly containing over 100 medicinal herbs, Chartreuse was originally sold as a "health elixir" rather than a digestif. To this day the recipe is still held secret in the monastery, although production has scaled up. As you may have guessed, it's one of my favorite liqueurs and has become my go-to "last drink" (after a big meal, when my guests leave). Also, if you ever go skiing in the Alps, you can mess with the locals of Savoie by asking for a Chartreuse rather than a Genepi[2], a similar drink from there. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartreuse_(liqueur) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartreuse_(liqueur) [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A9n%C3%A9pi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A9n%C3%A9pi
- x0 8y agoI learned perl almost solely because I love Larry Wall's personality.
- i_made_a_booboo 8y agoI legitimately want to push him down a flight of stairs.
- mlrtime 8y agoThis page loads so fast , why can't all pages be like this? :)
- robin_reala 8y agoIt’s easy, just install NoScript and you’ll find the web loads at the same speed.
- kwhitefoot 8y agoTrue enough but an increasing number of sites I visit load fast because without JavaScript they don't show anything at all!
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoThe static site movement seems to be the modern embodiment of this philosophy. The tools to generate them (eg Jekyll) might be clunky compared to Notepad but it's definitely a positive thing in this day and age of ever-bloated websites.
- tomjen3 8y agoMy personal site does not have any JS, but honestly at this point what I really want is an app where I can edit the page and see the markup and then press a button and it will generate and upload the content to my website. I tried to finagle gitlab into it (since they offer free hosting and CI) but I haven't gotten the last step to quite work yet. Would be awesome to be able to work in both of line mode or through my Chromebook, and sync everything with git.
- SerjEpatoff 8y agoCraigslist, HN. Still good–old, fast and extremely useful. Most newer crap–web has more bugs than features and nearly defunct after all. My opinion is that in this stupid century of hype, ADD, dyslexia and internal censorship immutability is the most precious asset. And swisswatch-like software can be the next big thing. PS. Booking.com is also cool. BTW, it is still powered by Perl.
- jason_slack 8y agoJust in case you don't quite know who Larry Wall is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Wall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Wall I wrote code for a bank using perl. I'd say 95% of their code at the time was in perl. Website called perl, back-end processing was perl scripts. Cron jobs were all perl script that needed to run to do house-keeping.
- collyw 8y agoIt's a shame Perl isn't still used. Maybe not by those who have to maintain poorly written Perl admittedly. (Edit: disappointed to see the Perl link doesn't actually work).
- kamaal 8y ago>>It's a shame Perl isn't still used. Perl is still one of the most widely used languages in world today.
- tacostakohashi 8y agoWhy is that a shame? It still exists, there's nothing stopping anyone from using it. I think it's safe to assume that the people choosing not to use perl have a good enough reason for their decision.
- stevekemp 8y agoIt's not sexy enough to be talked about, but it is still there. 50% of my (new) projects remain in Perl. The other 50% in a mixture of C, Go, and C++.
- lizknope 8y ago90% of the stuff I write is in Perl. The other 10% is Tcl. I design semiconductors and every week I have to write a couple of small scripts to process text files or reports and that is always in Perl. Everyone at work knows Perl. Those that don't learn it. The EDA tools mostly use Tcl as the internal scripting language so I have to use that. I have no problem with new languages but I find regex's in other languages to be too verbose.
- 8y ago
- kwhitefoot 8y agoMakes me less embarrassed about my own web page on neocities.
- themodelplumber 8y agoFunny that he lists his personality type, and that it's INFP. I find this is one of the coding types most likely to get a) amusingly literary/language-focused and b) extremely detail-oriented about their code. INFPs are also known for their "do what I wanna" values so the chartreuse decision was amusing in this light. I haven't used Perl much, but I wonder how else it might echo these values. He seems like he's made it his own, at the very least.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- kamaal 8y agoHeavy Perl user over the years here. Its the only language after Lisp, that will let you feel the power beneath your fingers. Back in the day I would do with Perl do over a weekend, what a Java programmer would budget 6 months to do. It was just a productivity catalyst from hell. I still think nothing comes to beat Perl when it comes to regex, and unix level scripting work. I eventually moved on to other backend languages/stacks. But I still miss the productivity boost Perl is. Over the years, I came to realize I like Perl so much, not because what Perl is, but the underlying concepts. Eventually I realized Perl is the closest to Lisp in the C world. And I like Perl, because I liked Lisp more. Lisp offers everything Perl offers, and more. And Lisp is infamous for almost the same reasons. These days I think Perl refugees will eventually find refuge somewhere in the Common Lisp or Clojure camps. And that is really good, because Perl like languages are basically a programming philosophy. Lastly, Higher Order Perl(free to download online) is one of the best programming books you will read. Its a book on the same lines as OnLisp from Paul Graham.
- rgrau 8y agoI can't upvote this enough. Thanks for putting my thoughts into words.
- InTheArena 8y agoLarry used to do consulting engagements in Boulder, and I had the honor of meeting him several times. Larger then life person but in just how he carried himself - he was quiet and unassuming, but still got people to work well together. I was always impressed with how he worked with Tom Christiansen, given the two of them seemed as different as you could be. Perl never made the javascript transition, but I think you call tell a lot about a programmer by the look in their eyes when you say perl. If the eye twinkles with delight at perl's simplicity, and then the expression is occasionally replaced by a murderous look of rage when you have to maintain a 5k line script, you can tell that the programmer is a great programmer and has a tale or two to inform more junior members of our profession.
- occams_chainsaw 8y agothen the expression is occasionally replaced by a murderous look of rage when you have to maintain a 5k line script Try dozens of 5k line Perl scripts I think my expression will soon be permanently fixed into a look of murderous rage
- JadeNB 8y ago> If the eye twinkles with delight at perl's simplicity There are a lot of great things to say about Perl, but does anyone call it simple?
- anonu 8y agoI was just thinking about Perl and how they dropped the ball. I'm sure Perl powers way more things than we want to admit - but its sadly not the first language that comes to mind when you want to write a quick script...
- ryl00 8y agoPerl is still my goto language for scripts. It all depends on what you're used to.
- singularity2001 8y agorememberry when homepages were called wallpage?
- vipulved 8y agoIn 2000, I managed to put together $ for a US trip from India to attend YAPC (Yet Another Perl Conference) at CMU. I had been on #perl for years, and knew a lot of rhe community, but I had never spoken with Larry. I remember I was given a shared dorm room (even though I had requested a single), and as I was settling in, this guy in all black walks in, and says hi I am Larry, I am your roommate. I was like hey Larry, and went back to unpacking, and in about a minute realized it was _the_ Larry. It was awesome as Larry then took me around the conference and introduced me to many of the other legendary Perlers. A+ dude.
- barbecue_sauce 8y ago> "Finger me for my public key". Double entendre, or unix geek obliviousness?
- leviathan 8y agohttps://linux.die.net/man/1/finger https://linux.die.net/man/1/finger
- barbecue_sauce 8y agoPretty clear from my comment I know what `finger` is.
- Fede_V 8y agoLarry Wall and his wife are some of the nicest people I ever had the pleasure of meeting. I posted this story on HN before several years ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9890504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9890504), but I think it's worth reposting here: 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. I cannot emphasize enough how unassuming, kind and decent the Walls are. If you are also interested in very intelligent writing about religion, their son, Aaron, has a very neat blog: http://www.wall.org/~aron/blog/ http://www.wall.org/~aron/blog/.
- atonse 8y agoThis sort of interaction, where multiple grownups just talk about a topic they have fundamentally different beliefs on, and being curious and mature enough to have a civilized discussion about it, seems just so distant and alien in these times. I've had conversations like these, about VERY sensitive topics, with friends who disagreed, and none of us held a grudge (that I know of). I miss that. I know this happened years ago, but still, thanks for sharing. It gives me hope.
- grondilu 8y agoLarry wall is also the highest profile person I know who spends lots of time on IRC to the point anuone can talk to him basically any time they want.
- PolyethenePeace 8y ago
- jhabdas 8y agoAnyone else spot the Brainfuck in there?
- johnzim 8y agoGeez I think I just found a broken link - his link under the family section for his daughter Heidi links to http://summonedcreature.com http://summonedcreature.com which is a comic illustrated by his daughter Geneva instead. Geneva's own link is broken. Time to write an email to webmaster@wall.org! It's like I'm back in 1994!
- softawre 8y agoWhat's with the > Getting paid for it! On his geek code explanation? http://www.wall.org/~larry/ungeek.html http://www.wall.org/~larry/ungeek.html
- shadowphex 8y agoIt means he makes money off of it, i.e. he works in the field.
- corobo 8y agoIt's been decoded from geekcode, the $ on the end translates to "Getting paid for it!" in whatever was used to decode
- vram22 8y agoLarry Wall's State of the Onion talks are pretty entertaining to read. As someone else said in this thread, he has the skill of linking to many other topics and making them seem related, then jumping back to the main topic he is on, and making it all sound interesting, and smooth and natural, not contrived. He also makes lots of good jokes and puns (well, at least some are good [1]). And speaking of Damian Conway, who was mentioned in this thread as a possible heir-apparent, he is brilliant. I bought and read an intermediate Perl book by him. Some really good stuff in there. Forget the name of the book now, but it should be possible to find it by a web search. It might have been Object-oriented Perl. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damian_Conway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damian_Conway [1] That was a kind of mild good-humored jab at him, BTW, the kind of thing that he does a lot in his talks and writings :)
- purplezooey 8y agoI hate my telephone. Please don't ask for my phone number. cool. he's one of us.
- hyperman1 8y agoIf only he would publish his phone number there, then we could all help him hate it together ;-)
- stevew20 8y agoI love that this exists. Best webpage I've seen this year! Fastest load time too!