Larry Wall
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Larry Wall (b. September 27, 1954), programmer, linguist, author, is most widely known for his creation of the Perl computer language in 1987. Wall earned his bachelor's degree from Seattle Pacific University in 1976.
Wall is the author of the rn Usenet software and the nearly universally used patch. He has won the IOCCC twice and was the recipient of the first Free Software Foundation's award for the Advancement of Free Software in 1998.
Beyond his technical skills, Wall is known for his wit and often ironic sense of humor, which he displays in the comments to his source code or on Usenet. For example: "We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on when it's necessary to compromise."
Larry Wall is a trained linguist, as well as with the design of Perl. He is the co-author of Programming Perl (often referred to as the Camel Book), which is the definitive resource for Perl programmers. He has edited the Perl Cookbook. His books were published by O'Reilly.
Wall's Christian faith has informed some of the terminology of Perl, such as the name itself, a biblical reference to the "Pearl of great price" (Matthew 13:46). Similar references are the function names bless and confess and the organization of his talks into categories such as apocalypse and exegesis. Wall has also alluded to his faith when he has spoken at conferences, including a rather straightforward statement of his beliefs at the August, 1997 Perl Conference and a discussion of Pilgrim's Progress at the YAPC (Yet Another Perl Conference) in June, 2000.
Wall continues to oversee further development of Perl and serves as the Benevolent Dictator for Life of the Perl project. His role in Perl is best conveyed by the so-called 2 Rules, taken from the official Perl documentation:
- Larry is always by definition right about how Perl should behave. This means he has final veto power on the core functionality.
- Larry is allowed to change his mind about any matter at a later date, regardless of whether he previously invoked Rule 1.
- Got that? Larry is always right, even when he was wrong.
See also
External links
- Larry Wall's personal home page (http://www.wall.org/~larry/)
- Perl Cookbook (http://safari.oreilly.com/JVXSL.asp?x=1&mode=section&sortKey=title&sortOrder=asc&view=&xmlid=0-596-00313-7&open=false&g=&srchText=BOOK+AND+%28BOOKTITLE+perl+cookbook%29&code=&h=&m=&l=1&catid=&s=1&b=1&f=1&t=1&c=1&u=1&r=&o=1&page=0)
- Programming Perl (http://safari.oreilly.com/JVXSL.asp?x=1&mode=section&sortKey=title&sortOrder=asc&view=&xmlid=0-596-00027-8&open=false&g=&srchText=BOOK+AND+%28AUTHOR+Larry+Wall%29&code=&h=&m=&l=1&catid=&s=1&b=1&f=1&t=1&c=1&u=1&r=&o=1&page=0)
- Authoritative list of Larry Wall quotes (http://www.cpan.org/misc/lwall-quotes.txt.gz)
- Quotes by Larry Wall (http://quote.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Wall) (Wikiquote)
- Perl, the first Postmodern Language (http://www.perl.com/pub/a/1999/03/pm.html)
- State of the Onion keynotes: 1997 (http://www.wall.org/~larry/keynote/keynote.html) 1998 (http://www.perl.com/lpt/a/1998/08/show/onion.html) 1999 (http://www.perl.com/lpt/a/1999/08/onion/talk1.html) 2000 (http://www.perl.com/lpt/a/2000/10/23/soto2000.html) 2001 (http://www.perl.com/lpt/a/2001/07/25/onion.html) 2002 (http://dev.perl.org/perl6/talks/2002/onion2002/2002.txt.htm) 2003 (http://www.perl.com/lpt/a/2003/07/16/soto2003.html) 2004 (http://www.perl.com/lpt/a/2004/08/18/onion.html)cs:Larry Wall
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