All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

Larry Wall Facts

Shlomi Fish on 2007-04-01T08:19:14

In addition to the Chuck Norris facts, the Bruce Schneier facts and the Eric S. Raymond facts, I decided to start writing some "Larry Wall facts":

  • Larry Wall can understand the Perl code he wrote last year.
  • Larry Wall gets the colon.
  • There are at least 137 Larry Walls in the U.S. but only one that matters.
  • Larry Wall applies a patch manually quicker than GNU patch.
  • Larry Wall dreams in Perl.
  • Larry Wall can program in his sleep.
  • Larry Wall is lazy, impatient and full of hubris.
  • Larry Wall has more dollars in the bank than in his Perl code.

More additions are welcome.

Well I like you enthusiasm...

sigzero on 2007-04-01T18:25:44

I don't think Mr. Wall would agree with this one:

There are at least 137 Larry Walls in the U.S. but only one that matters.

Minor quibble I know...

Suggested revision

stu42j on 2007-04-02T18:14:05

Larry Wall applies a patch manually quicker than GNU patch (which he himself wrote).

Re:Suggested revision

Shlomi Fish on 2007-04-02T22:01:20

Larry did not write GNU patch. GNU patch may have been a fork of his patch program (though I doubt it), but I think it was a rewrite. In any case, GNU patch has much more features than the original patch by lwall, which is now good enough only as a historical curiousity.

That put aside, I was hoping people would come up with more funny facts of their own. Did April Fools' (or Passover) ate your sense of humour? ;-)

Re:Suggested revision

stu42j on 2007-04-02T22:15:10

The GNU patch says:

Larry Wall wrote the original version of patch.

As well as:

Copyright (C) 1984, 1985, 1986, 1988 Larry Wall.

Yes, I imagine there is little (if any) of Larry's code left but I figured it was true enough for a joke!

I also thought of it a being a nice reference to the "bolder so heavy" (or "burrito so hot") type question.

Re:Suggested revision

jdavidb on 2007-04-03T00:48:59

I thought it was a funnier joke without the explanation, myself. :)

Re:Suggested revision

Shlomi Fish on 2007-04-03T06:45:55

Cool! Thanks for the research and letting us know. Here's the original patch announcement as far as I could tell. I still don't know whether its licence was GPL or BSD.

Anyway, it's nice that some of the people at the GNU project are re-using code like this. I do wish they did not have the tendency to convert perfectly fine BSD/Public Domain code into the GPL or LGPL.

Dreams?

cog on 2007-04-17T18:21:04

Larry Wall dreams in Perl.

Ah, but he thinks in whistles! O:-)