Happy Birthday Perl!

Puppet Master writes: "Just remembered that Perl was created on this day (12/18) in 1987 by Larry Wall..." Check out the Time Line and the discussion on use.perl.org and I'll take this chance as a reminder to donate to the Damian Conway/Dan Sugalski slavery fund.

Comments

For everyone who wants to learn perl too..

[linuxrunner]

I don't normally plug things but, this is free, and it seems appropriate:

Currently Barnes and Nobles and their partnership is currently offering FREE Learn Perl courses online....

They try and sucker you in to buy the book, but it is not necessary for those who don't want to, but again, it is a very good book, therefor I would recommend it.

So if you ever wanted to know what we were all talking about when we say "PERL", now's your chance...

Re:This post...

[Frothy Walrus]

what part of

$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142 ;$ t=255;@t=map{$_%16or$t^=$c^=(
$m=(11,10,116,100,11,122,20,100)[$_/16%8])&110 ;$t^=(72,@z=(64,72,$a^=12*($_%16
-2?0:$m&17)),$b^=$_%64?12:0,@z)[$_%8]}(16..271 );if((@a=unx"C*",$_)[20]&48){$h
=5;$_=unxb24,join"",@b=map{xB8,unxb8,chr($_^$a[- -$ h+84])}@ARGV;s/...$/1$&/;$
d=unxV,xb25,$_;$e=256|(ord$b[4])<<9|ord$b[3] ;$d=$d>>8^($f=$t&($d>>12^$d>&gt ;4^
$d^$d/8))<<17,$e=$e>>8^($t&($g=($q =$e>>14&7^$e)^$q*8^$q<<6))<< 9,$_=$t[$_]^
(($h>>=8)+=$f+(~$g&$t))for@a[128..$#a]}p rint+x"C*",@a}';s/x/pack+/g;eval

don't you understand??

It's about that time...

[MicroBerto]

Ahhh, 14 years old. Perl is now going to become (even more) rebellious, may stop talking to its parents, and will insist on being called a man, or more mature.

Don't be surprised if you begin seeing Perl tend to lean towards more pornography and opposite-sex modules. Excitement will soon begin for the car and driving modules as well!

Larry, although Perl doesn't want to talk with you as much during these rebellious years, please make sure that it takes care of itself during its bodily changes, including washing its face, as acne outbreaks are rampant during these years and can ruin its complexion forever.

Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris

[kryzx]

Here are a bunch of interesting conversations with Larry Wall:
http://paulagordon.com/shows/wall/

Also, this would be a good time to remember the principles of good programming:

• 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. Hence, the first great virtue of a programmer.
  
• 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 that pretend to. Hence, the second great virtue of a programmer.
  
• HUBRIS: Excessive pride, the sort of thing Zeus zaps you for. Also the quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won't want to say bad things about. Hence, the third great virtue of a programmer.
  

Re:wow!

[plover]

And on the second day, Larry rested.

(It didn't start out big enough to take seven days!)

John

Re:Ummm .. hold on here ...

[tycage]

The Perl Timeline says December 18th.

Re:Why perl is the holy Grail

[jtdubs]

> Because it has all the great functional features that can make Lisp programmers happy.

Yeah. Of course it does. It support first-class functions perfectly, and of course, can handle lambda abstractions and currying without breaking a sweat. It can also do perfect continuations. It prefers recursion to looping and eschews side-effects too. Well, actually, perl 6 does do currying and first-class functions.

> Because it has a wonderful OO model which can make all OO programmers happy.

Yes, naturally. It's obvious perl was designed from the ground up to be the holy grail of OO programming. But seriously, it does have increasingly good OO support. OO in Perl 6 is nice. It's not the best OO language around, though. It's not even in the top 10. Well, maybe top 10. There aren't many OO languages that don't suck.

> Because it has super fast compilers that can make C and C++ programmers happy.

I mean, yeah, it's not slow. It doesn't have the god-awful long start-up time of Python. It's not C. It's not C++. It's not assembler. It is fast for a language of it's kind.

> Because it is great for imperative programming and for functional programming.

Imperative programming, fine. Functional programming, I think not. Not being lambda-calculus based, Perl may have a rough time with that whole mathematical provability of correctness thingy. It also doesn't do list comprehension for shit. Hell, who needs that stuff anyway. :-)

> Because it is great for procedural programming and for OO programming.

Procedural, fine. OO, see above.

> Because it is as multiplatform and portable as Java.

Multiplatform, check. Portable as java... are we counting GUI's? If not, check.

> Because it is designed to please everyone
> without compromising on anything, and, put more
> simply, because it can reconciliate the C, Java,
> Lisp and C++ community.

You CAN'T please everyone without compromising on anything. Plus, nothing will ever reconsile the Lisp community with anyone... :-)

> Because it can even be used indifferently as a scripting or a system language.

Ok.

> Because it is great for teaching AND for the real world.

Real world... yes... for smallish programs. You don't see many enterprise-class million-line-long programs written in Perl.

Teaching... good god i hope not. If you ever get my kids started with a language as cryptic as perl with it's magic variables that it uses without asking you and it's $var syntax I'll shoot someone. You may want to check out Python though. Imagine Perl without nearly as much support or maturity, but with beautiful syntax and good OO, and it's improving real quick.

> Because its compilers are libre software and its
> design and developement are made in a very open
> fashion.

Ok.
Anyway, I like Perl. It's a wonderful language for some things. I mean, it IS the glue of the internet. But it is NOT the holy grail of programming. It does not satisfy everyone, it can not do everything. It is a good language though.

Justin Dubs