Slashdot Mirror
Larry Wall On Perl, Religion, and...
by Marx_Mrvelous
I've been using perl for a very long time, but primarily as a scripting language. I indeed mostly use it for extraction and reporting. With the recent developments in perl, however, there seems to be the trend that perl is able to do much, much more (while retaining compatibility to be "just" a scripting language).
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?
A:
I am perfectly happy for Perl to continue parsing logfiles. Perl has always been, and always will be (I hope), a humble language. When I am 80 years old, even if everyone in the whole world puts me on a pedestal and thinks I'm the renaissanciest man that ever lived, I still intend to take out the trash when my wife asks me to. Just because I'm learning Japanese doesn't mean I have to stop speaking English.
But just as people grow (and are stretched), Perl continues to grow (and be stretched). Perl has acquired new skills over the years, and people have been using Perl to do all sorts of things that are arguably at the limits of its capabiliites. The solution to that is not to stop people from doing that, but to increase Perl's dynamic range.
The thing is, people are already building more advanced applications with Perl. But there are some aspects of that process that aren't as easy as they could be. They're hard. In times past we were proud of the fact that the hard things were even possible with Perl5. We often chant the slogan: "Easy things should be easy, and hard things should be possible."
But as with any slogan, there are some qustionable assumptions hidden behind the sentiment. We assume that it's obvious which things should be easy or hard, and that the things that are currently easy are the things that ought to be easy. We assume that making the hard things easy will necessarily cause the easy things to become hard. But sometimes it's not obvious what should be easy or hard. Sometimes the wrong things are easy. And sometimes there are ways to make the hard things easier without making the easy things harder.
Some of the complexity in a Perl5 program is necessary to the solution, and some of it isn't. We can't eliminate the necessary complexity, but we can hope to get rid of some of the needless complexity. That will make everything easier. Well, most everything...
I'm really under no illusions that we can make everything easier at once. There's no such thing as a perfect language. Merely making a more expressive language means it's in some sense more difficult to learn to express yourself responsibly. That's the price of power. Manhattan will always be more difficult to understand than a set of beads.
But in any event, let me assure you that Perl6 will not be as difficult to learn as Japanese. :-)
2) Perl Beginners
by KoopaTroopa
I'm a CS student who's recently become very interested in Perl along with other languages. However, I don't really have too much everyday (or even occasional) need to actually USE much Perl. I am big into learning as much as I can about it for its own sake.
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 Perl6 revision?
A:
I don't think you would be damaged by learning Perl5, though I'm sure there are those who would disagree--or at least choose to be disagreeable.
It really depends on your curiosity level, I think. Some people would learn both Perl5 and Perl6 merely to see how a language design evolves over time. Those folks are pretty hardcore. Count yourself lucky if you're not one of them. But despite appearances, Perl5 isn't a totally horrible language, and we're hoping to save all the good bits of it in Perl6. People moving from Perl5 to Perl6 shouldn't find it too difficult to unlearn the naughty bits, especially since it's the naughty bits that tend to be frustrating. And if you're ever in a situation where you need to use Perl6 for real, it's likely you'll have to deal with legacy Perl5 code anyway. So as usual the answer is: "It depends..."
Gildor was silent for a moment. 'I do not like this news,' he said at last. 'That Gandalf should be late, does not bode well. But it is said: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. The choice is yours: to go or wait.'
'And it is also said,' answered Frodo: 'Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.'
'Is it indeed?' laughed Gildor. 'Elves seldom give unguarded advice, for advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill. But what would you? You have not told me all concerning yourself; and how then shall I choose better than you? But if you demand advice, I will for friendship's sake give it. I think you should now go at once, without delay; and if Gandalf does not come before you set out, then I also advise this: do not go alone. Take such friends as are trusty and willing. Now you should be grateful, for I do not give this counsel gladly.'
3) Structured programming and perl
by slashnot007
The reason I like perl is it is not a structured programming language. In my work I find it is 50% a get the job done parsing language and 25% sequencer of programs and deamons and 25% major ojbect oriented programming effort often a cgi.
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 perl6 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).
A:
Er, what do you mean by "structured"? 25 years ago all of these languages would have been considered "structured", in the sense that a block generally has only one entrance point. (There were also people who thought that a block should only have one exit. Thankfully these folks did not prevail, since functions representing decision trees often have one entry but multiple exit points.)
But you obviously mean "structured" in a different sense, or perhaps several different senses. Syntax is structure, and different languages have different syntax, but I don't think that's what you mean.
I'll assume you mean "structured" the way a grade school teacher means it, as in "structured play time", as opposed to "free play time". Python's slogan is "There's only one obvious way to do it." That's fine from the computer's viewpoint, but kinda sucks from the human viewpoint. "You can play any game you like, as long as it was organized by the teacher."
Java was, in that sense, much less structured than Python, I think. That's part of the reason for Java's success, but it came at a price. One of the problems with Java is that they swept a bit too much of the innate complexity of life under the carpet of the libraries. And so now they've had to replace the carpets several times.
So, yes, Java started with a "clean slate", but it was a rather undersized slate, methinks. But as for "structured play time" in Java, the structure has been imposed more by cultural norms than by the language itself.
As for Perl, it has never been "structured" in that sense, though it has always been structured in the sense that you can create as much structure as you like. The whole point is that the structure is optional, not imposed externally. If you're playing with your schoolmates at recess, you can always choose to organize a football game, but the teacher isn't making you do that.
Playing football is like programming in the large. You have to agree on a lot of rules to do it with other people. Perl5 doesn't make it terribly easy to agree on a set of rules, and we hope to make that easier in Perl6. You have to have discipline to do programming in the large, but you'll choose the discipline by turning up the big discipline knob yourself, not by having someone else turn it up for you. Perl6 will give you the big knob.
I am philosophically opposed to turning up the knob for you, because I don't know how fast you want it turned up. (Perl6 will turn it up for you a little by default--if you write a module or class, it'll automatically default to a stricter mode than it uses for your main program.) But the reason I don't like doing it for you is that you know how fast you want to learn, and I don't. As Gildor says, you haven't told me enough about yourself for me to give you advice. If I don't know how hard you can paddle, I can't tell you how big of a wave to try to catch. We all have to start with the small waves.
We find the same problem in teaching reading to kids. Some people shout "Whole language!" while others shout "Phonics!" Well, guess what, they're both oversimplifying. You have to learn some phonics, and then you learn some larger bits based on that, and some larger bits based on that, and eventually you find that you're intuiting whole language. The whole language folks fall into what I call the "Expert Fallacy". You look at how experts do something, and assume that's how everyone should do it. There are some people who are natural readers. They naturally figure out the bits and pieces themselves. But if you try and teach everyone that way, half your kids never figure out the phonics.
Programming is the same way. Language designers tend to look at how experts program and then think that everyone ought to learn to program that way from the start. That's a bit like expecting a new surfer to do well on 40 foot waves. Some will make it, but most will wipe out.
Perl is designed to help people learn the bits of programming they need right now without forcing them to learn the techniques they aren't ready for. But when they are ready for them, Perl tries to be there too. We just don't tell the beginners that the speedometer on their golf cart wraps around several times.
4) What will you *not* put into Perl 6?
by TreyHarris
What would you say has been the number one requested feature that you will not put into Perl6, and why not?
A:
That depends on what you call a feature, and what you call a request. If you look at all the RFCs at dev.perl.org, you'll find that most of the feature requests are bogus on some level or other because they tend to suggest bandaid solutions. Nevertheless, I think it's best to treat them all as a "cry for help". With computer languages, about 75% of the bandaids have a bullet hole underneath.
So, for instance, I officially rejected the RFC asking for multiline comments, while actually accepting the underlying premise that it was too difficult to do block comments. But the better solution is not to introduce more syntax, but to fix the POD syntax to do what people want.
But this is Perl, after all, so there has to be more than one solution. The other solution is to make the Perl grammar malleable enough that the user can install their own multiline comment mechanism anyway via a pragma, so there! That's fine by me, as long as the syntactic warpage is lexically scoped. "All is fair if you predeclare."
Another often-requested feature that's not going into Perl6 is implicit lexical declarations. That's one of those features that seems like a good idea when you're looking at small snippets of code, but it breaks down when the scopes get larger than you can see in a glance. Scoping by indentation has the same problem, but nobody has seriously requested that for Perl6, for some strange reason...
Now you might think that getting rid of the $, @, and % sigils would be the number one requested feature, but typically that is suggested only by people who don't know Perl and probably wouldn't use Perl even if we did get rid of them. The folks who know Perl tend to like the sigils.
5) perl vs other languages
by larry bagina
Whenever perl pops up in slashdot, there are plenty of language zealots claiming perl is obsolete and you should really be using php or ruby or python instead.
What are your thoughts on these other scripting languages? What do you like about them, what do you dislike?
A:
Well, in general, the thing I don't like about other computer languages is that they're not Perl. :-)
Seriously, Perl matches the way I think pretty well, because what I mostly want in a computer language is a wide dynamic range. I want a language in which you can say both dirty, low-level stuff and fancy, high-level stuff. I want a language where both baby-talk and fluency are acceptable. Other computer languages tend to try to level those distinctions.
As for specifics, I must say that the example of Ruby is the main reason I decided against implicit lexical scoping for Perl6. We'll be sticking with explicit my declarations. But I have to like the majority of Ruby simply because that's the part that was borrowed straight out of Perl. :-)
I also liked Ruby's unary splat operator, so I borrowed it for Perl6.
The main problem I see with Ruby is that the Principle of Least Surprise can lead you astray, as it did with implicit lexical scoping. The question is, whose surprise are you pessimizing? Experts are surprised by different things than beginners. People who are trying to grow small programs into large programs are surprised by different things than people who design their programs large to begin with.
For instance, I think it's a violation of the Beginner's Principle of Least Surprise to make everything an object. To a beginner, a number is just a number. A string is a string. They may well be objects as far as the computer is concerned, and it's even fine for experts to treat them as objects. But premature OO is a speed bump in the novice's onramp.
I confess, I have a soft spot in my heart for inside-out languages like PHP. The first real compiler I ever wrote was for a sort of text-processing macro language in which the commands were embedded in the data. This is part of a more general class of programming languages in which a peculiar form of processing is assumed by default, such as the pattern/action syntax of awk that assumes an invisible outer loop.
Perl can do that, but it's not the default. I think languages like awk and PHP hobble themselves in the long run by attaching themselves to a particular ecological niche, particularly when a generalist like Perl can effectively occupy the same niche. So I've never felt tempted to even try PHP. I'd only be speaking second-hand if I said that PHP has some serious namespace and extension mechanism issues. So I won't say that. :-)
Python is cool to look at small bits of, but I think the "outline" syntax breaks down with larger chunks of code. I'm with Aristotle on the structure of discourse--a story should have a beginning, and middle, and an end. So should blocks.
There's something to be said for forcing everyone to code in the same style, but that's not the Perl Way. At least, it's not the default Perl Way. But all is fair if you predeclare. It's perfectly fine for you to import a pragmatic module that enforces a certain style policy. It's even fine if your company forces you to import that pragma. Of course, if you want real programming discipline, I'd suggest you use Damian's Klingon module...
6) Perl and .NET
by prostoalex
What is your opinion of .NET in general and Perl's role in it? Given that .NET supports Perl as one of the languages would you recommend actually using it for any projects? Do you see good future for this tandem?
A:
As far as I'm concerned, .NET is just another architecture that we need to port Perl to run on natively. The current approach to .NET interoperability is a bit of a hack, I think. That is partly Perl's fault for not having a sufficiently powerful type declaration system, but it's also a problem that .NET doesn't really support dynamically typed languages very well. I foresee that we'll have something like a Parrot interface that functions as a (hopefully thin) layer of glue over other VMs such as .NET or Java machines. The less impedence mismatch there is, the thinner the layer can be.
I recommend that you use Perl where it makes sense to use Perl, and avoid using it where it doesn't make sense. I am not the judge of whether it makes sense to use Perl on .NET, simply because I'm way too ignorant and stupid to be making those kinds of decisions for you. Sorry.
As for the future, I really don't know. Long, long ago (when our galaxy was far away) I shoehorned Perl and Java into the same process, and it never aroused much excitement. Certainly the Java folks tend to turn up their noses at non-100% Java solutions, but it got a pretty chilly reception from the other end as well. By and large, Perl programmers don't seem to have much appreciation for Java. I think the language architects who aren't living in reality tend to like multi-language solutions a lot more than ordinary folks do.
Which is, of course, why we're doing exactly the same thing with Parrot. Go figure. :-)
6.5) From a project managers prospective
by mustangdavis
What are your thoughts on the comments made by people that Perl is not designed for projects that require more than one programmer? Many people have stated over and over again that Perl code can not be managed by more than one person ... what are your thoughts on that statement? How would you manage a large Perl project? Do you think Perl should be used for large projects? (or should it be used strictly as a "quick and dirty" programming language?) BTW: I love your work (someone had to say it)
A:
I do not manage any large projects, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. I haven't an executive bone in my body. All my managerial skills are delegated. Ask anyone I've delegated to...
However, those who claim that Perl code cannot be managed by more than one person are obviously smoking something worse than crack. They're simply ignoring the many examples of people who have done just that. But you wouldn't expect to hire random people off the street to come in and collaborate on writing a novel. You can do it by hiring a few good novelists who already know how to figure out how to work together, or at least how to fight with each other productively. In the absence of that level of expertise, you can also do it by setting up policies under which random people can work, rather like the rules for writing about the world of Liavek, in which, for instance, every story has to mention a camel.
That being said, there are things we can do to make Perl6 better at helping managers and architects set up such policies for programming in the large. Having a standardized opaque object type will help there as well. Nobody is going to claim that Perl6's OO is "bolted on". Well, except maybe for certain Slashdotters who don't know the difference between rational discussion and cheerleading...
7) Role of Religion?
by Anonymous Cowdog
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.
A:
Well, hmm, that's a topic for an entire essay, or a book, or a life. But I'll try to keep it short.
When you say "how in the world", I take it to mean that you find it more or less inconceivable that someone with a scientific mind (or at least technical mind, hah!) could chooose to believe in God. I'd like to at least get you to the point where you find it conceivable. I expect a good deal of the problem is that you are busy disbelieving a different God than the one I am busy believing in. In theological discussions more than any other kind, it's easy to talk at right angles and never even realize it.
So let me try to clarify what I mean, and reduce it to as few information bits as possible. A lot of people have a vested interest in making this a lot tougher to swallow than it needs to be, but it's supposed to be simple enough that a child can understand it. It doesn't take great energetic gobs of faith on your part--after all, Jesus said you only have to have faith the size of a mustard seed. So just how big is that, in information theory terms? I think it's just two bits big. Please allow me to qoute a couple "bits" from Hebrews, slightly paraphrased:
You can't please God the way Enoch did without some faith, because those who come to God must (minimally) believe that:
A) God exists, and
B) God is good to people who really look for him.
That's it. The "good news" is so simple that a child can understand it, and so deep that a philosopher can't.
Now, it appears that you're willing to admit the possibility of bit A being a 1, so you're almost halfway there. Or maybe you're a quarter way there on average, if it's a qubit that's still flopping around like Shoedinger's Cat. You're the observer there, not me--unless of course you're dead. :-)
A lot of folks get hung up at point B for various reasons, some logical and some moral, but mostly because of Shroedinger again. People are almost afraid to observe the B qubit because they don't want the wave function to collapse either to a 0 or a 1, since both choices are deemed unpalatable. A lot of people who claim to be agnostics don't take the position so much because they don't know, but because they don't want to know, sometimes desperately so.
Because if it turns out to be a 0, then we really are the slaves of our selfish genes, and there's no basis for morality other than various forms of tribalism.
And because if it turns out to be a 1, then you have swallow a whole bunch of flim-flam that goes with it. Or do you?
Let me admit to you that I came at this from the opposite direction. I grew up in a religious culture, and I had to learn to "unswallow" an awful lot of stuff in order to strip my faith down to these two bits.
I tried to strip it down further, but I couldn't, because God told me: "That's far enough. I already flipped your faith bits to 1, because I'm a better Observer than you are. You are Shroedinger's cat in reverse--you were dead spiritually, but I've already examined the qubits for you, and I think they're both 1. Who are you to disagree with me?"
So, who am I to disagree with God? :-) If he really is the Author of the universe, he's allowed to observe the qubits, and he's probably even allowed to cheat occasionally and force a few bit flips to make it a better story. That's how Authors work. Whether or not they have thumbs...
Once you see the universe from that point of view, many arguments fade into unimportance, such as Hawking's argument that the universe fuzzed into existence at the beginning, and therefore there was no creator. But it's also true that the Lord of the Rings fuzzed into existence, and that doesn't mean it doesn't have a creator. It just means that the creator doesn't create on the same schedule as the creature's.
If God is creating the universe sideways like an Author, then the proper place to look for the effects of that is not at the fuzzy edges, but at the heart of the story. And I am personally convinced that Jesus stands at the heart of the story. The evidence is there if you care to look, and if you don't get distracted by the claims of various people who have various agendas to lead you in every possible direction, and if you don't fall into the trap of looking for a formula rather than looking for God as a person. All human institutions are fallible, and will create a formula for you to determine whether you belong to the tribe or not. Very often these formulas are called doctrines and traditions and such, and there is some value in them, as there is some value in any human culture. But they all kind of miss the point.
"Systematic theology" is an oxymoron. God is not a system. Christians are fond of asking: "What would Jesus do in this situation?" Unfortunately, they very rarely come up with the correct answer, which is: "Something unexpected!" If the Creator really did write himself into his own story, that's what we ought to expect to see. Creative solutions.
And this creativity is intended to be transitive. We are expected to be creative. And we're expected to help others be creative.
And that leads us back (finally) to the last part of your question, how all this relates to Perl.
Perl is obviously my attempt to help other people be creative. In my little way, I'm sneakily helping people understand a bit more about the sort of people God likes.
Going further, we have the notion that a narrative should be defined by its heart and not by its borders. That ties in with my linguistic notions that things ought to be defined by prototype rather than by formula. It ties in to my refusal to define who is or is not a "good" Perl programmer, or who exactly is or isn't a member of the "Perl community". These things are all defined by their centers, not by their peripheries.
The philosophy of TMTOWTDI ("There's more than one way to do it.") is a direct result of observing that the Author of the universe is humble, and chooses to exercise control in subtle rather than in heavy-handed ways. The universe doesn't come with enforced style guidelines. Creative people will develop style on their own. Those are the sort of people that will make heaven a nice place.
And finally, there is the underlying conviction that, if you define both science and religion from their true centers, they cannot be in confict. So despite all the "religiosity" of Perl culture, we also believe in the benefits of computer science. I didn't put lexicals and closures into Perl5 just because I thought people would start jumping up and down and shouting "Hallelujah!" (Which happens, but that's not why I did it.)
And now let's all sing hymn #42...
8) Thanks Larry
by wdr1
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?
A:
Hmm, what timing! You must be from one of those churches where they pass the offering plate right after the sermon... :-)
Even just saying thanks is much appreciated. But if you want to help out more, there are lots of places to donate time or money. Unfortunately, it takes time to figure out how to donate time, since you have to hang out with various interest groups until you get, er, interested in one of them. But it's part of Perl culture to value contributions to Perl culture, so don't hold back just because your contribution is not somehow technical. That's not how we work.
Donating money is easy (except, of course, for the money part). Tax-deductible contributions can be made to the Perl Foundation. Much of my support for this year has come through the Perl Foundation--my full-time work on the Apocalypses would have been impossible without it. If you can persuade the companies you work for to make donations or to match your donations, that's also a worthwhile investment of time (and in some cases, agony). Please allow me to express my sincere gratitude here for everyone who has contributed already. This program is made possible by viewers like you.
9) perl 6 niche
by maraist
perl 1-5 have been great UNIX configuration/management languages. This includes small-scale webserver platforms. It's very difficult to find any other language that is as versitile in this respect where it reigns in it's niche. It is the perfect combination of speed, power, simplicity and huffman encoding (especially given the co-UNIX-tools look-and-feel).
Perl6 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 perl6 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?
A:
Excellent question. I love the evolutionary biologists' way of talking about organisms as if they're evolving on purpose: "I think I'll develop feathers now and become a bird...", though in Perl's case, of course, there is some amount of purpose in my head (some would say "not enough"), not to mention the heads of other Perl developers (some would say "too much" (or is it the other way around?)), but it's still great fun to talk about Perl as if it were its own beastie, or as if it were a character in a novel that runs away with the plot despite the intentions of the author, kinda like this sentence has.
Anyway, from the start, Perl has never really been satisfied with staying in any one particular ecological niche. That's not terribly healthy approach in evolutionary terms, especially when your niche goes away. Perl's been pretty lucky so far to land in stable niches, but if some of its current niches dry up someday, that's really only to be expected, and indeed almost hoped for. It's probably the fault of closing ecological niches that we aren't all still swinging from trees, after all. (Of course, some of us still are, but that portion of us isn't heavily represented on Slashdot. Er...appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.)
Perl started out as just a text processing language--a better awk and sed--but it very rapidly spread to the ecological niche of system administration. On Unix, at least, a lot of system administration is text processing. With version3, however, Perl very intentionally escaped the text-processing-only niche by adding the capability to process binary data. Perl4 UNintentionally spread from the sysadmin niche into the CGI/Web niche. Perl5 accellerated that trend by intentionally occupying the extensible-glue-language niche, which had the unforeseen (by me) but predictable result of enabling Web sites to hook all their backend databases to the various textual Internet protocols.
But if you're worried about Perl trying to inhabit the "good for everything" niche, that's actually been Perl's intention since Perl5 came out. After all, you can't add OO to any language without making it perfect. ;-)
Seriously, I think that, for many of the people who use Perl today, the ecological niche they're thinking of is already labeled "everything", even if it isn't quite. For those folks, trying to make Perl better for the "everything" niche is not really an issue--they're already panting for it. These are the people who will actually carry Perl over to the next ecological niche it spills into, and the ones after that. I just made Perl a glue language, and other people applied it to bootstrapping the Web. Making Perl the best tool for growing programs from small to large is actually one of the underlying design goals of Perl6. But other people will use that to inhabit, or even create, other ecological niches. I hope to be surprised again as I was with the Web. I could, of course, be completely wrong.
10) How to get people to take Perl seriously
by kin_korn_karn
I'm a perl programmer who uses it daily. The push is on from the C?O types to get rid of Perl, even though a bunch of us here know it and are very proficient and fast with it. The new standard is Java with web services and all that other BS. This sickens me, because a) I'm biased towards Perl and b) I know Java is simply a fad language and the overhead/infrastructure only serves to give do-nothing architect types jobs.
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?
A:
Well, if Java really is a "fad" language, we don't have to do anything to beat it, now do we? :-)
Leaving that aside, my goal is (and has always been) for Perl to be as useful as possible. It naturally follows that if people are avoiding Perl for artificial reasons, Perl is not being as useful as possible. So there's a place for advocacy. It is an unfortunate fact that, human nature being what it is, an ounce of cheerleading often beats a pound of rational discussion.
However, my job is not to lead cheers, but to make sure that Perl is designed to be maximally useful. It has never been a direct goal of mine to be "taken seriously". For good or ill, I am composed of far more levity than gravity. And I'm afraid some of that rubs off on Perl, too. But if Perl is everything it ought to be, it will naturally attract serious attention over the long term. If ecological niches are natural, and if nature abhors a vacuum, it follows that ecological niches abhor vacuums too. I expect to hear some great sucking sounds over the next ten or twenty years.
He didn't answer any of the "Can I date Heidi?" inquiries. Must have run out of time...
...to understandly what Larry said, would it be hard to restate it more easily? Or is it easily understood that Larry should be hard to understand?
I bet he wrote a nice perl script to do it for him.
even included SourceForge ads.
http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/0 9/06/1343222&mode=nocomment&tid=145
sic transit gloria mundi
"Perl 6 will give you the big knob."
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I love it when religious arguments that purport to be "logical" include statements like this.
I missed the original discussion in which all these questions were collected, but yowza, that's a dense question (no offense to the inquirer!).
I am not religious either - faith is simply not in me, I cannot believe in something I cannot see - so I see where the inquirer is coming from, but as Larry puts it, the question is talking at right angles.
To say "you're a scientist, how can you believe in God?" makes the automatic and ignorant assumption that said scientist believes said god created the world in thirty days, wrought man from the testicles of a gopher, and causes the sun to rise every day by means of ropes and pulleys (or something of the like - you get my point).
Larry may be a Christian, but though there may be many irrational/ignorant/intolerant Christians in the world, not all Christians are like that. As a friend of mine says, the attitude that they are "puts the asshole in atheist."
Being religious does not preclude being a smart and talented scientist. Sorry if this is a bit OT, but I'm kind of fed up with the attitude that "belief in god(s)" == "irrational and stupid." And though he has in no way convinced me, I'm quite impressed with Larry's defense of his faith.
Karma: T-rexcellent.
Why the need for a novel language to do web scripting? The only argument I can see is ease of installation and learning, but those aren't good reasons for serious developers.
Perhaps that's something for companies to consider. Every place I've worked, large and small, has had some Perl working away in the background in some capacity - from humble one-off tasks like formatting the odd bit of text through to being the driver for the automated test framework or managing the corporate web infrastructure.
...
We seem all too willing to throw money at licenses for Office, but my team uses Perl in many interesting, fun and labour saving ways every single day - even though ostensibly we're coding in C. I think I might make a case to my manager on Monday that a small donation has *already* paid for itself
Excellent interview; would like to see more with him in the future. My dream list right now would be:
Click here or here.
The philosophy of TMTOWTDI ("There's more than one way to do it.") is a direct result of observing that the Author of the universe is humble, and chooses to exercise control in subtle rather than in heavy-handed ways. The universe doesn't come with enforced style guidelines.
Hmmm. Seems to me that could equally be the basis for an argument against an "Author". If you look at life on earth, there is basically only one way to do it. It's all genes and DNA and every complex living thing shares something in common with the others. There is no "artistic expression" that shows up at all.
I was somewhat wondering who might actually have suggested this, probably not anyone who has made a serious use of Perl.
When I first used Perl, I found the $%@ symbols confusing as all heck, and wished it was more like PHP.
Now that I've used a lot of Perl, I wish PHP would make more use of the $%@ symbols for clarity sakes. Actually, it would be a lot nicer in many languages to use symbol-defined clarifiers, I certainly get tired of "Dim Somevar as sometype" and "sometype somevar" when somebody makes an extremely ambiguous name which doesn't differentiate an array from a scalar or reference variable.
Ignorant people keep educated people employed! - phorm
Larry said "We find the same problem in teaching reading to kids. Some people shout "Whole language!" while others shout "Phonics!" Well, guess what, they're both oversimplifying. You have to learn some phonics, and then you learn some larger bits based on that, and some larger bits based on that, and eventually you find that you're intuiting whole language. "
Whole language incoporates phonics as one of it's several learning approaches.
Whole language is, in fact, exactly what you go on to say is the 'right' solution.
(I'm not a teacher by training, but my mum is a reading specialist (with her graduate work focusing on the subject) and I did confirm this with her)
Wow, here we have some chimp systems admin who picked up Perl and started programming. Now he thinks anyone who uses are real software development language is an ivory tower do nothing, or an incompetent know-nothing CEO.
Truly, completely idiotic. Java a fad language, huh? For 8+ years? Wow, that's a long-lived fad. Are you completely daft?
Thats the best explaination of the Christian faith I have ever seen applied to geek speak.
Now if someone will just translate "The Book of Subgenius " into python........
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Sunsets too.
Best Slashdot Co
I think Jobs might only do a /. interview if it could somehow be in person, rather than text-based. He usually needs at least video and voice in order to project the Reality Distortion Field (TM). =)
In seriousness, such an interview would probably draw just about everyone's interest, including mine.Of course, I'm still hoping that someday the Microsoft antitrust case will end (what happened with that anyway?) and Bob Cringely will convince Jobs to do the tandem interview with Bill Gates they'd almost done years ago.
And yes, I admit that such an occurrence is definitely going to stay in the realm of "dream interview..."
Perl 6 will give you the big knob.
That's as funny as it gets.
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
As much as I respect Larry, I have one thing to say : "The Devil is in the details". "God exists" sounds so simple. It's not. Ethics are fundamentally different in the presence or absence of a God. In the absence, ethics are based around pragmatism and as such adaptible. In the presence, ethics are given to us. Look at history. Which case has proven the better approach? I'd rather God not existed, but if he does, I hope he has foregivness for me since I do in fact live by many of his rules - only out of pragmatism. I expect to burn in hell if there is such a thing, though.
Stop the brainwash
When will thinkgeek start offering shirts that say this? I'd buy one.
I believe that Eric Allman is a dirty homosexual, isn't he?
> MORE LUNIX!!!!
/.
Arrggh! Crackhead mods!
How can this statement POSSIBLY be 'off topic' on
What I am basically saying is that I don't see the value in a domain-specific language for web scripting. Even outside of perl, java and C# provide good tools for reusing the language you already use elsewhere in your web apps.
> truly intelligent, open-minded evangelical Christian
God is good to people who really look for him.
This is actually a premise we can test, and it's simply false. Many studies have been done comparing religious and non-religious people, and it's never been found that religious people end up with "better luck" (better health, better livelyhood, better children, etc) that non-religious people.
Now, you could argue that perhaps these studies aren't correcting properly for whether someone is "really" looking for God, but at the very least we can assume that if God is "good" to those people, then the effect is pretty subtle.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Does anyone know where this is? I can't find it on CPAN.
--
E_NOSIG
With all due respect, the initial question was "How can you believe in God?" and not "Which of the huge litany of Christian, Catholic, and pseudo-Christian ethical laws do you think actually apply, and how do you reconcile the ones that seem to conflict with scientific evidence?"
Larry really was right-- a lot of people's perceptions make the question more complicated than it needs to be.
Larry Wall ses: "Because if it turns out to be 0, then we really are the slaves of our selfish genes, and there's no basis for morality other than various forms of tribalism"
there it is again! Religionists, including christians, believe they have a monopoly on morality! this is ignorant and insulting, and you should be ashamed of yourself. Here's a couple of alternatives upon which to base a morality:
1) The Golden Rule: Treat others as you would like to be treated.
2) Homo Sapiens is a social animal, but it is not possible to put any number of animals together in a society without establishing rules of engagement; i.e. a moral code. Call it tribalism if you wish, but since every religious cult seems to have its own moral code, i don't see how religious tribalism is in any way superior to secular tribalism. If there really is an omniscient, all-powerful creator, he/she has done a really shi--y job of getting across a consistent message.
are cults.
Why does Slashdot bother blocking IPs if it's so easy to bypass? It's just two more mouseclicks for me to post with a proxy.
Religious people can write good code. For example, on the Amiga there was an application called Cross-DOS (religious pun I guess) that let you use MS-DOS floppies transparently, read and write.
It was so good, it was one of the few progs I paid for.
Oh yeah, three things. Perl does suck the big one.
Why are there so many languages and protocols?
Lately, I've seen more and more uptight types[1] skewer Larry as a half-assed linguist, a half-assed language designer, a half-assed art historian, and a half-assed philosopher. What they don't realize is that Larry sees things from so many perspectives--some entirely original--and incorporates them so fluidly, that analyzing him in any narrow way is laughably short-sighted. Yes, he is educated in these fields, but expecting him to come off sounding like an orthodox linguist, language designer, art historian, or philosopher entirely misses his true gifts.
Set aside your judgement for a moment, and simply savor the output of one of the most creative, wittiest, and just plain renaissanciest minds with which we have the pleasure to associate. (Oh, he's also a nice guy and never said anything mean about you. :-) )
[1] Yes, they're mostly Python advocates
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
Part of science is to prove that it exists. Just because you cant find evidence that prove that God exisits, dosent mean that God dosent exisit. I have not heard of any sciencetific method of Proving that God dosent exist. If you cant prove that something exisit then you have to prove that it dosent exist to be scientifically proven that God dosent exist. So if a Scienctist beleaves in God that dosent conflect with his science because God hasent been proven or Disproven. At best science seems to show that parts of the religious text are not nessarly word for word. Witch most religous people (including priest and bishops, etc) dont take the entire text literal.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Wow. Larry said what I've been thinking for a long time - this whole "What Would Jesus Do?" business.
I'm a Christian, been that way for a long time (in the Protestant Evangelical sense of the word). Frankly, the answer to WWJD?? is "Probably not what I'm going to do." It may be morally motivational for some, but frankly for me it's very hard to imagine "What would (the Son of) God do here??" when you consider both a macro (in addition to micro) view of God.
Anyway, great interview.
... the more you note that the fellow was called Schroedinger.
1. this is not funny.
2. this is obvious and redundant.
3. you nerds need women in your lives.
4. moderators blow peenas and trolls haxor poonus.
5. i could go on and on but quite frankly you nerds arent worth my time.
6. kthx
kewsh
Every word from Wall serves to confirm him as one of the most outstanding pseuds in the computer world. Fair enough, if he can get away with it, but why pretend to be humble? It isn't even faintly convincing. "renaissanciest"? I don't think there's much danger of that, Larry.
The computer language stuff is fairly obtuse and subjective. People use Perl, Perl has some attractions -- fine. But don't start this all-round-philosopher-guru thing.
The pop science quantum physics explanation of God really is a new level, even for Larry Wall. The "post-modernism" (although it had little to do with it, or anything else for that matter) "State of the Onion" address is as nothing to this. Qubits? Schroedinger's cat? Alive, dead observors, "God told me this", blah blah -- does it mean anything *at all*? I think it does mean one thing, and that's that Wall really does buy into the "all-round genius" explanation of his limited fame, rather than the "created an ok language" one.
You don't see Guido or Bjarne or any other language author putting on such airs. Why take it from Larry?
I guess I'm a bit confused... Since when was the whole point of Christianity getting into Heaven and avoiding Hell? If your view of religion is just about what happens "after death", then I submit that perhaps you're missing the point. Do you really think God made this whole world just to throw it away in a few thousand years after it starts getting interesting?
Not that there isn't any room for discussions of an afterlife, but my impression of Christianity from the Bible reading I've done seems to imply that Christianity is far more about the present world.
My theory is that most Christians look for God to do stuff in the real world and don't see it, so they assume that's because religion only matters for the afterlife. It's a defense mechanism that avoids admitting, "I must have misunderstood something about what God wants."
I think I'm going to donate to the Perl Foundation just because Larry is long-winded and spews Lord of the Rings quotes often.
:(
He kinda reminds me of, well, me.
Except for the entire creation of Perl thing.
Someone should've asked him what he thought of Jackson's movies.
I would also recommend "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis. It's an edited compilation of several radio speeches which attempts to reduce Christianity to it's core beliefs, without getting into doctrinal debates (Catholic vs. Anglican vs. Baptist, etc).
This is something Larry touched on with the comment on learning to "unswallow" some of the beliefs he grew up with (and I can definitely relate to that).
Larry wrote: But as with any slogan, there are some qustionable assumptions hidden behind the sentiment. We assume that it's obvious which things should be easy or hard, and that the things that are currently easy are the things that ought to be easy. We assume that making the hard things easy will necessarily cause the easy things to become hard. But sometimes it's not obvious what should be easy or hard. Sometimes the wrong things are easy. And sometimes there are ways to make the hard things easier without making the easy things harder. ;)
This paragraph should be taken out and shot.
Beware the wood elf!!!
I gotta know?
Great interview, Larry, and let me be another to say "Thanks!" for Perl. My favorite line from the piece: 'Christians are fond of asking: "What would Jesus do in this situation?" Unfortunately, they very rarely come up with the correct answer, which is: "Something unexpected!"'
.sig here on slashdot-- "WWJD? JWRTFM!")
could that *be* more perfect?
(btw, I'm sure you've seen the
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Larry, I like your answer to this. The WWJD craze always bothered me. I suppose it has some merit, but it comes across as trite. Chances are, He would do the last thing we would expect, mostly because He's, "writing the story from the middle."
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Math is perfect, by it's definition. The same with English. They're both languages used to express things by their own rules. But it's how they're used that determines whether the application is correct. I can write an equation, but if I don't plug in valid input, it's worthless.
Scientists justify their theories with studies and findings. Christians justify their beliefs with the Bible. The problem in both cases is that people on both sides are just that: people. They interpret things incorrectly and call them fact. At one time, every observation thought of proved that the world was flat. To state that science today is infallable is absolutely retarded.
Saying that "scientific studies prove atoms exist but the Bible doesn't prove squat" is a fallacy, plain and simple. Theologists study the Bible, trying to find coheasion. When they find something that doesn't make sense, they try and come up with an explaination for it. Many "scientists" call this proof that God does not exist. "Why, if Soandso did this, could Soandso do this, and God still do this?"
The same goes for science. Theories arise to explain things that we're not sure about. They're not always right.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
There are more similarities between science and religion than you realize.
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
before i jump in and join the debate about religion, how will my comments here affect my karma? no, i mean my Karma? wait, i mean... oh, nevermind ;-P
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Doctrines are the diving boards to jump off, and swim away from.
Several people were curious about Larry's opinion on OOP in general.
I am surprised that questions about his religion were (allegedly[1]) higher ranked than something more on-topic like OOP.
(Then again, OOP is a religion of sorts it appears to me.)
[1] Although no OOP question may have had the highest rank, there were at least 2 that scored fairly high. Are 2 four's less weight than one 5?
Then again, based on his other responses, he would probably say something like, "Perl allows you do use OOP if you like it, but skip it if you don't. It gives you more choices than almost any language, and choices are good and I don't want to dictate to you what to use".
Table-ized A.I.
I've noticed about Larry - he studiously avoids mentioning Lisp. Perl 6 could save a lot of time by just copying ideas direct from Lisp instead of from other languages that copied them from Lisp!
For example: If he finds Java or Python OO deeply unsatisfying and unnatural, maybe that's because it is, but maybe he should be jumping Perl straight to CLOS-style generic function OO rather than discarding OO.
I think he meant "from the point of view of people who really look for him, God is good".
You are all refuting and arguing the OTHER interpretation, "God gives good benefits and preferential treatment to those who really look for him."
Kinda ironic, people accuse PERL of being impossible to parse without an author to consult.
Austin is more fun than Dallas.
I don't know about all this god stuff, but at least I got a new sig out of the whole affair!
"And like that
The first mistake most people make (religious, athiest, or whatever) is incorrectly defining the problem and its scope. Your being too closed minded with your analysis.
Okay, so if there is a God and he/she/it/them/... and if the premise is that "God is good to people who really look for him" then that cannot be properly tested in any way. Why? Because how is God good to them? How many subtle ways might God have saved a person's life or changed it? Perhaps some hardship one faces is, in the long run, "better" for them. And what's more, if there is a God, then the it's quite likely that the "goodness" God will give to those who "really look for him" won't come until some sort of afterlife. And how could you measure that?
So the logic doesn't stand -- as most "logic" people use to claim existance or non-existance of God. Too often people limit the scope of possiblities and come to incorrect and inconsistant conclusions.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
God is good to people who really look for him.
This is actually a premise we can test, and it's simply false. Many studies have been done comparing religious and non-religious people, and it's never been found that religious people end up with "better luck" (better health, better livelyhood, better children, etc) that non-religious people.
You are absolutely correct.
The beauty of religion, and why it can persist in the face of reason, and even seduce intelligent people like Larry Wall, is that the parameters of every definition are endlessly malleable.
Remember that mustard-seed sized bit of "faith?" That provides all the wiggle room required for any religious premise, no matter how prima facia absurd, to withstand argument, provided you argue on their terms (which is almost always what is expected and demanded). "Faith" means acccepting something which defies logic, so the theologens are correct when they say a tiny bit of faith is all that is required. A tiny bit of willingness to defy logic and accept the absurd is all that is required to promote, and buy into, any belief system at all, no matter how absurd, how self-destructive (remember the now-extinct Shakers? How about the People's Temple?), or how simply plain wrong it is when illuminated by the cold light of reality.
In this particular case, the non-religious people end up being burned 'alive' for all time, while the religious people enjoy a profoundly boring existence playing harps in the presence of the universes most stodgy old man (which of course, makes one wonder what happens to those whose harp-playing skills aren't up to snuff).
Or some variation thereupon, the key ingredients being "the faithful" (there's that word again) get to live well, while the "non-believes" (that would be you and I) are tormented forever.
Given that, god really is good to those who look for him, at least in comparison to his treatment of those who do not.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Once you look at the level your brain is most comfortable with, you can see the art and creativity.
First of all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and beauty is relative. Everything is beautiful; some things are simply not very beautiful (or maybe negatively beautiful; whatever), just like very cold things simply have very little heat. Of course something is beautiful if you look at it on the level your brain likes most. What if I look at a rotten, brown banana peel soaking in a mixture of used motor oil and fly-infested human feces? Not beautiful. But what if I look at it through a microscope? I might find the microscopic structure beautiful. I have not, however, changed what I'm looking at; only how I'm looking at it. Remember, beauty is not just in the beholder, it is also in his or her "eye."
As for artistic expression, an object is art if and only if two conditions are met: someone created it, and that creator claims/intends that the creature is art. I don't want to get into the argument of whether humans are the creatures of some more powerful entity; the point is that unless you manage to convince the entire rest of the world that humans are creatures and not accidents, you cannot expect people to agree with you when you say that humans are works of art. A rock formation may be beautiful, but it is not art unless someone put it that way on purpose.
PUBLIC SPLIT ON WHETHER BUSH IS A DIVIDER -CNN scrolling banner, 10/15/2004
That's the ticket for me. I can look at germs with a microscope. I can fly to another continent if I really want to. Hell, I can even fly my paraglider any old time the wind is good - how many religions can make you fly?
I haven't seen atoms, but neither has anyone else - however that model makes some accurate predictions that actually work.
There's the key - science makes predictions that are testable, and work. Religious predictions are generally untestable (life after death and whatnot) or don't really work (buddha works in mysterious ways, etc).
So basically, science does stuff that works. Religion does stuff that doesn't work. Therefore, I think religion is full of crap.
I invite you and all religious followers to come kiss Hank's ass
Thank you
Yet you wish to speak for those who are. How exactly is it that you know what is in the heart of hearts of religious people?
If I am reading you right, you're saying that as a religious person I am either full of contempt for those not like me, or a hypocrite for not being full of contempt. WTF is that about? That's the sort of philosophy based on the idea of justifying your dislike/hatred of religious people rather than anything resembling real life.
We're not all like the religious people who did terrible things to you. If you have faith in humanity, have faith in that statement. Personally, I find it harder to have faith in humanity than I do to have faith in God.
-r
Just because something is free does not mean you have to take it.
Reading some of Larry's writing really makes it obvious why Perl is the way Perl is.
Like this quote: We assume that it's obvious which things should be easy or hard, and that the things that are currently easy are the things that ought to be easy. We assume that making the hard things easy will necessarily cause the easy things to become hard. But sometimes it's not obvious what should be easy or hard. Sometimes the wrong things are easy. And sometimes there are ways to make the hard things easier without making the easy things harder.
I was like, what the hell is he talking about. Which is often what I find myself saying when I am reading some Perl code. But after spending some time looking at the code, or written words of Larry, you realize that it's not complete insanity and it actually does make sense. It does make sense, right?
Larry is the best.
LoRider
I'm about as atheist as it goes, so don't take me wrong, but I think that Larry's point still stands.
Be it only because when shit happens (and sooner or later, shit does happen), it's much easier to live through it if you've got a blind belief that there's a benevolent, powerful being up there who is looking after you personally, and all the more so that you're in need for it.
That's actually a religion's major selling point, when you think of it.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
Likewise with Perl and PHP. As your organization matures, you will find that your offline and online processing reuses techniques and tools. Why not reuse packages themselves? Using your approach I would more or less end up coding everything twice, once to support perl users doing offline work, and once to support PHP people doing the same/similar thing online.
The converse also holds - if you are already using PHP online it makes sense to use it for offline work as well. These languages are so similar in capabilties that I don't buy the domain-specific arguments.
No shit. I quit on the first answer when he started quoting Tolkein.
Off topic: I just saw the "Lord of the Rings" movie. That is the worst move I've ever seen - and yes I have seen some of Taco's beloved anime.
God didn't create the universe. Well, He did, but not intentionally. God just wanted a beer. But you can't just create a beer floating in the middle of the void -- there's nothing satisfying about it. It would be like a book written by an illiterate person -- sure, he could put lots of black squiggles onto a bundle of pages that would vaguely look like a book, but it wouldn't mean anything.
So for a proper beer, God pretty much had to make up physics. I'm not just talking about the refinements needed to get it to foam just right -- I'm talking about the whole deal. After you drink some, there should be less left over, not more. Drinking a beer should not make you turn into beer yourself. Beers should not be smarter than the drinker. Well, not the first few, at least. The state of drinking beer needs to contrast with something, so the state of not drinking beer must also exist. In fact, that's where most of the world came from, because having the world exist in only two states (currently drinking beer/currently not drinking beer) just seemed too lame to a clever guy like God. Same idea for water and other liquids -- if He can drink beer, He really ought to be able to drink not-beer, just so He can say He chose the beer instead.
And then there's the whole question of origins. A beer is so much less interesting if it creates itself or just spontaneously comes into existence. A truly full-bodied beer needs a background, a character, a story. God went a little crazy with that, inventing those 'human' things with enough cleverness to invent stuff, curiousity to try things out, and a desperate need to get sloshed, smashed, trashed, and basically totally drucking funk. And all that cleverness and curiousity necessitated science. And dinosaur fossils. And religion. (God got a real kick when he realized he'd have to invent religion, I remember. Of course, he wasn't exactly sober by that time...)
Oh, and you know that bit about "...and on the 7th day He rested?" Purely an excuse to keep us from bothering Him during His hangover. We're still on the 7th day, see. I'm not even sure if He thought far enough ahead to make an 8th day. He was having some trouble with the notion of Time, and I recall Him saying something like "aw, screw it. Nobody's going to be drinking any beer at the speed of light anyway. I'll see you later -- I'm gonna go get wasted."
is more surfing analogies.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
I have spoken to a 'God' (a God in the world of open source development) .... and for a change, the God's have spoken back to me ...
.. question #6.5 is mine!
... although I was hoping for something that could be used to defend Perl a litle more from the "crackheads" that constantly profess that Perl is only a "quick and dirty" language.
... if it works, it should make managing Perl MUCH easier!!!
How cool!!
That's right
Although I wasn't expecting quite the colorful answer that I got, I really enjoyed his remarks on my questions regarding whether or not Perl was meant for large projects, especially the witty comment stating that:
However, those who claim that Perl code cannot be managed by more than one person are obviously smoking something worse than crack
I totally agree, and like the fact that he pointed out that other people have done this in the past
However, I'm liking the idea of the OO model for Perl 6
Thanks Larry!
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
some idiot writes:
b) I know Java is simply a fad language and the overhead/infrastructure only serves to give do-nothing architect types jobs.
Hmm, as a "do-nothing" architect and software developer involved a large scale j2ee electronic payments project, I think I can safely say that implementing our system on Perl would be the stupidest decision ever made. I'll leave Perl to sys admins & script kiddies who get off on running Linux on their parents blender.
Does Perl support distributed objects? Naming & directory services? How's the XML integration. All this stuff is easy (for "smart" people) to imlpement with the so called FAD language known as Java. Get a clue.
Ummm, I've seen Mars. It was in the sky, not the heavens though.
Who's to say that God isn't pragmatic?
.. based around pragmatism." If I misunderstand, please let me know.
Okay, just for a second, lets throw out the human aspect and forget about organized religion and look just at the existance of God and any set of ethics by which he/she/it/they exists and enforces. Now, let's start with a couple axioms. Suppose God exists and has this set of ethics. Also suppose that there is some other set of ethics/laws which are defined not by God, but my "pragmatism." For the sake of arguement I'll say these "pragmatic" ethics are universal truths of the same nature as the laws of physics and chemistry. They are self-evidant and any "pragmatic" person using reason and time would be able to discover them. This is what I believe you to mean by "ethics
Okay, so we have God and his/her/its/their ethics and we have the pragmatic ethics. Now, it may be possible that these two set of ethics are disjoint, or there could be some overlapping or one could be a subset of the other. Regardless, I think the fundamental question is this: Is something right because God says it is, or does God say something is right because it is right? Think about it.
If the answer is the first, then there is no guarentee that there is any correlation between pragmatic ethics and God's ethics. It would be competely up to God's whim (if there is such a thing).
If the second is true, then by definition, God's ethics are the pragmatic ethics. They would be the same set.
Now, the existance of God is a question one is not going to be able to solve or prove rigoriously. However, it is my feeling that if there were such a being(s) that in order to be such a being(s), that being(s) would have to have an understanding of mathematics and the physical laws of nature (this to me seems reasonable considering the universe we are able to observe. It could be wrong, true, but I think the alternative is significantly less probable). So if this supreme being(s) had such an understanding, then it would be most likely that the set of ethics adopted by that being(s) would be the most "true", ie- pragmatic. Therefore, my feeling is that the existance of such a being(s) would imply that any ethics or judgements passed by such a being would be pragmatic/objective/true.
Now, that doesn't mean that should such a being(s) decide to communicate with the human species that the instructions given would be implemented properly. In fact, human experience would suggest otherwise. So I am willing to "see past" the efforts of most individuals (and religious organizations) in their implementation of such instruction and ethics and recognize that perhaps there is something underlying their actions which is more "correct."
The point of this rant is that in your arguement, like most others, you failed to be properly open minded and look at all the possibilities of the solution set. Should there be a God(s), I seriously doubt that he/she/it/they are contrained by the limits our unenlightened minds place on him/she/it/them. Is is possible that if there is a God(s) that his/her/its/their ethics are competely arbitrary? Yes. However, is it possible such ethics are in fact what you consider pragmatic? Yes. Therefore, one could reasonably believe in God, follow God's ethics, and also live pragmatically without any hypocracy. I just wanted to point this out.
Oh and if you have issues with my he/she/it/they thing, I'm just trying to further point out that we often have preconceved notions and we should learn to consider all alternatives until otherwise agreed upon.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
Wall, you and your bullshit can impress the posers, wannabes, and sysadmins on slashdot - but any real programmer is disgusted by your crappy language, your self-righteous religon, and your pompous rhetoric.
Perl sucks, there is no God, and Tolkein was a comic book writer.
Trouble is, I've prayed for a lot of the wrong things. Only now in my middle age am I getting a hint of a glimpse of what "should be".
I stopped asking for "things."
"Thy will be done" should be enough to make you happy.
He created all of this for your sake- YOU personally. YOU are the audience for this spectacle.
Without God, NOTHING has meaning. In 100 years I will be forgotten. In 200 years Larry Wall will be forgotten. In 500 years GW Bush and Bill Gates will be forgotten.
In 10,000 years somebody may dig up your old CD collection ans ask "wtf is this?"
In 10 million years Homo Sapiens will likely be Homo something more. Our entire civilization will be forgotten, and will have left no mark, save a few really dirty nuclear hot spots.
The only two things you can EVER do in this life that can possibly make a single whit of difference are to love God, and accept His son as your savior.
If Jesus doesn't save you, who will?
But I really have no control over whether I believe something or not. I either believe or I don't. I certainly can't choose to believe in God simply because there's a potential reward after dying.
Larry mentions "Shoedinger's Cat". According to a google search, it is actually spelled "Schroedinger's Cat". A definition of which can be found here http://www.emr.hibu.no/lars/eng/cat/Default.htm
He did tell you to do something. He also told you NOT to do something.
RTFM. Or are you afraid to?
I'm glad you understood that so well, but then you missed one of the points that was central to his explanation. God is an individual, not a set of rules or formulae (that's wrong, isn't it?). Humans, made in the image of God, understand how to make an exception where one is due. The ever present "letter vs. intention of the law" isn't a problem, because he wrote the letter, and enforces it based on the intention. And that's why he's suggesting that the details aren't as important as the center. Because the legalese of the Bible isn't important if you get the theme.
Science may someday discover what faith has always known.
Exactly. There is no evidence and if someone claims there is you should indeed look closer to examine the evidence. Exact science is actually about proving hypothesis wrong, not proving them right. So far there is no evidence for the existence of a god that has not been dismissed decisively (other than eye witness reports by peasants, discovery channel and various other unreliable sources).
You can of course belief that there is proof of god anyway. However, you cannot prove it (which is why you need to believe). Between believing there is a god and accepting the contents of the bible/koran/lotr as 100% truth, there is a gliding scale of selectively believing stuff and not believing other stuff. However, all of this is fundamentally in conflict with a scientific point of view.
Believing there is a god in the absence of any proof is unscientific no matter what your point of view is (you can of course chose to believe science is bullshit). The contradiction in a relegious scientist must obviously be that on one hand he/she believes that all conclusions must be scientifically motivated and at the same time beliefs something holds true in the absence of such motivation.
Neither the existence nor absence of a god like entity can be proven. However there is no scientific evidence motivating the assumption that there is a god (quite the opposite actually).
As a scientist it is my position that there is absolutely no reason to jump to the absurd conclusion (and paraphrasing Sherlock Holmes that would be only warranted if you had explored all other options) that there is a god like entity. Apart from the difficulty in defining what that is exactly (a mandatory step of any scientific proof), I am not aware of any phenomena that require the presence of a god like entity to be explained. I am aware that there are phenomena that are not (yet) fully explained. However, that is because we haven't explored all options yet. Any conclusion that a god like entity would be at work is premature and unscientific.
Some of my (very smart) colleagues are religious and society tells me that is their right. However, society can't convince me that it is in any way consistent with a scientific point of view. It is either science or religion. There is no middle way. Anyone claiming there is takes two points of view that are in contradiction (hence either one or both assumptions are false). In addition, a possible third assumption would also be absurd so that leaves us no other rational choice but to accept that science is the right assumption until proven otherwise. However, once you decide to assume the absurd (which again is unscientific) it is entirely consistent to assume more absurd things, including that science is consistent with your other (absurd) assumptions. Claiming to be a scientist and to believe in god is absurd.
Jilles
simplicity is not always the same a reduction.
and in any case, God isnt made of other things is He? smaller parts? so to find god and his will you need to simplify.
god is the paint, man.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
I disagree with Larry on the point of religion and morality. Religion may be valuable to some, not so to others, whatever, but it is NOT the basis for morality as Larry states, it IS in third grade, not after that.
"Because if it turns out to be a 0, then we really are the slaves of our selfish genes, and there's no basis for morality other than various forms of tribalism. "
According to Kohlbergs theories on moral development and my own thoughts on the matter (regardless of others theories) high levels of moral development are related to conscience and an understanding of the world around you and consequnces to other beings.
Morals are NOT based on the bad boy punishment hype of most modern religions. I am an atheist (not agnostic, the first bit is zero, so the rest of the Larry explanation is out the window, sorry) and I have a high level of morals. I participate in my community, I am law abiding, I help others in need, I have compassion for others, I can decide what is right and wronq quite well, without religion. Tribalism is NOT the only alternative. There is REALITY to turn to. Nature is beautiful and magical and special and worth preserving, caring for and maintaining, just because of what it is, without some other extra psuedo up in the clouds watching over giving it meaning crap. Life has meaning without god, MORE meaning.
I would normally leave religion well enough alone, but in this case, as in most cases where it comes up, it is the religious who brought up the discussion and hence warrant a response. Religion is fear based. Religion was created by man because we are smart enough to understand that we are mortal and that is a mindblower for most. We will all die, and we will be dead. There is no afterlife, there is no reason to "be good" here to get some silly reward for eternity later.
When more people start to live in reality the world will be a better place.
If you are a Christian, I can just as well argue that since your pet dog is nothing but a clever piece of meat, why should you bother treating him as anything else. *picks up butcher knife* A dog doesn't have a soul and as the Bible said animals are here to serve man.
The hard reality is that most people are nothing more than dim-witted pieces of meat, and it doesn't really matter how you treat them. Don't believe me? Go to the nearest big city and observe the inhabitants of the ghetto. I don't know about you, but I've seen monkeys with more intelligence. Due to our genetics, some people are just better, faster, and smarter than others. It's nothing to be coy about, it's simply the facts.
Love your wife, trust your friends, and kill your enemies. Call it tribalism or whatever, but it's the way man has survived for thousands upon thousands of years. Get used to it.
This could have used a little bit more salt, I think.
This is really good, I think.
It really depends on your curiosity level, I think. .NET interoperability is a bit of a hack, I think.
Java was, in that sense, much less structured than Python, I think.
The current approach to
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
That would be a cool one.
Of course he hasn't done much lately, except the crunchbox...but I'd be interested in knowing some stuff.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
my little way, I'm sneakily helping people understand a bit more about the sort of people God likes.
Thus it is God's own will that thou shalt program perl. Let us strike down the heathens who worship at the altar of (PHP|Python|Ruby)!
or:
dear lord,
foreach $languser (@scriptinglanguages) {
kill 1, $languser;
}
amen
To read makes our speaking English good. - X. Harris
Come on, someone stop commenting on the religion question and answer this one.
l #operator,
The closest thing I found was on http://outerbody.com/ruby/ruby-man-1.4/syntax.htm
which seems to say that in Ruby one can do
foo(*[1,2,3])
instead of
foo(1,2,3)
From what I can tell, in Ruby [] is the standard make-a-list operator, and lists in Ruby seem to operate similarly to lists in Python and array references in perl.
However, this doesn't seem like anything new to perl; doing
foo(@array)
is the same as calling foo with each of the elements of @array as arguments. If $a is an array reference, this becomes:
foo(@$a)
So I don't think that this Ruby operator is what was meant.
> Python is cool to look at small bits of, but I think the "outline" syntax breaks down with larger chunks of code.
In other words, Python effectively discourages too deep nests and too long methods.
Thanks, Larry, for this elegant description of the harmony of science and religion. It might surprise some of my fellow /.'ers that the Baha'i Faith has been asserting the essential harmony of science and religion for over 150 years.
I have to profoundly disagree here. I am one of the 'non-prevailers' referred to, and I absolutely believe that a block should have only one exit.
If you've started to structure something in a certain way (a while loop, a function...whatever) then abide by the implications of that structure. It makes the code flow better - a coder coming in doesn't start staring at the bottom of the loop without realising you actually bailed out at the top. And if I call a function, it should return - return, not exit somewhere half-way through. The only exception being the function exit of course...
Cheers,
Ian
Talk about a sudden flash of enlightenment!
The existence of God is represented as the two-bit value 11. I *finally* understand what is meant by the holy trinity.
Thanks Larry!
Isn't it interesting that the biggest topic of followup conversation is not any part of Perl, but Larry's view of God and man's relationship to him. I think Larry did a masterful job of telling the truth with love. And I think that the fact that so many people want to discuss it further shows that this is the real center of life. Thanks, Larry.
http://www.rmcrob.com
"Our Father"
If you believe Jesus had inside information, then that wraps up the debate.
The one about the man who goes to a psychologist and says "Doc, My brother thinks he's a chicken." The Doctor says, Bring him him, I will cure him." The guy says, "I can't, we need the eggs."
jeff
Can you imagine that? All of the universe, the earth, and all its creatures, written in perl. Whoa.
Lord, I would hate to have to debug *that* program.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Who are you to say that what a Hindu, or a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Wiccan believe in isn't God as well? If you haven't heard the elephant parable, you should - basically, if a bunch of blind men are trying to describe an elephant by touch, you'll get a ton of completely disparate answers, which, when looked at from a higher stance, all make sense. It's much the same way with religion. All religions have the same kernel of truth to them - it's up to the people to figure them out.
The kernel of truth might also be that all religions display different aspects of human imagination. There isn't necessarily a real entity behind any of the myths and religious experiences. This would perhaps be sad, but no amount of wishing could change that reality.
You should also notice that many religions, especially Christianity, fundamentally exclude the reality of other religions. Christianity is totally atheistic regarding the gods of other religions -- except regarding its own god. It even goes as far as to deny the worship of other gods; why would the supreme God deny the existense of his other representations and actually threathen to send people to eternal damnation or death if they worship them?
Also other religious doctrines are totally contradictory between religions (you can consider each person's religious views a different religion in this sense). In most forms of Christianity, repetitive rebirth is simply impossible. In most forms of Hinduism, the Christian "eternal life" might be considered an abhorrence (they seek towards eternal death, not eternal life). One says that it has a trunk and big ears and another that it has a muzzle and small pointy and hairy ears.
Certainly you can always create your own religion that takes the convenient common and non-conflicting bits and pieces from an assortment of religions, but your new religion is not the same as the original religions, which might explicitly deny your heretical interpretation of the particular god.
It should also be clear to you that we humans have enough imagination to create myths that don't have real god-entities behind them. Even if you believe that many religions have an actual entity behind them, you would be naive saying that none are merely imagined. Now, if you start constructing your picture of the elephant by collecting the myths of different religions -- some imagined and some maybe not, you probably end up in a unicorn, not an elephant.
Since we seem to have trouble distigushing between imagined and "real" religious truths (if they exist), we can't really say if any of the religions have any truth.
Consequently, agnosticism and atheism (which are not exclusive, btw) are the only rational choises left, unless you happen to meet a god, a son of a god, or an angel who makes some convincing miracles such as creates a unicorn pet for you. I'm yet to see such miracles so I remain an atheist.
Science as we know it is fundamentally based on Christianity. Just as science is founded on an optimism that we can consciously know the world through reason, christianity is founded on an optimism that we can consciously know God through Christ.
Both very useful philosophies, one for knowledge and technology, one for morality and ontology. Both extremely dangerous in the hubris they inspire, in the ego-centric bias they inscribe.
Sorry to butcher Nietsche like this, but someone had to say it. Can't we move beyond this "prime-mover" crap? There is no will in the universe, it just is. Scary but true.
"And now let's all sing hymn #42... "
c-hack.com |
god dammit!
I just had a really good reply to the article. Then ie did something funny and it deleted, so I had to type it again. Then ie did a different funny thing and now I have to type it AGAIN!!! ARGH!
This wouldn't be so bad if I were just being a dumbass and chosing to use ie over another browser, but I have to use what my school has, since my new apartment won't have internet access hooked up for another week.
Curse Bill Gates!!!!!!!!
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
... or "Plain Old Documentation". It is very simplistic yet powerful enough to write books (like the Camel) in.
It can also be easily converted into almost anything, be it PDF, HTML, PostScript, nroff, plain text or what have you. the list goes on and on.
It is also the built in documentation language of Perl, and it is everything javadoc (for instance) should have been, since it is so easy to write, human readable as it is and powerful in its output.
I find it interesting how often I hear scientists question how anyone could believe in God (or astrology for that matter) in the absence of any consistent measurable evidence for his existence. Yet, I am both a Taoist and scientifically minded, and nobody has ever questioned how as a rational human being I can believe in a force that can never be measured and controls the entire universe.
Although I did have a high school art teacher who repeatedly questioned how I could be a Taoist and still play computer games.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
In the end, nobody can "sell" you on it. Either you go find out for yourself or regard it all as nonsense, dillusion, whatever. However, keep in mind that many of the historians and archeologists who've gone searching for evidence to dis-prove God have become Christians themselves! I believe the actual stat was in "Wild at Heart" by John Eldridge
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
While this was part of the preface and not part of the actual question, I'm curious (as a non-Perl person) whether Perl 6 actually will suffer performance losses as a result of supporting greater abstraction, or is it likely to be just as fast for those not using those higher-level facilities.
( Read More... | 36931 bytes in body | 633 of 663 comments | Interviews )
:-)
well now i guess 2 more
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
Hopefully, this knob of which he speeks will have a "Readable" selection. I find myself, after having written some perl (and commented it), wondering what I just did to make it work. When I go back to fix some bug, I find it easier to just redo a section than to figure out exactly why it was functional (not even considering the bug at this point). The line noise perl programs should be impossible when the knob is set "Readable".
:).
As for theology, the existance of God to me is a qubit that can be observed with any given teaching. When I use the Bible to observe it, I keep getting a 0 because the old testiment was much to brutal for me to accept as devine. That's better than getting the -1 that I think I would get with scientology though
Karma Clown
Only if Taco had spelling like that!
My life in the land of the rising sun.
by larry bagina
Larry, do you happen to have a sister named Alotta? Perhaps a brother named Harry? Or a brother named Fillmore?
I haven't an executive bone in my body. All my managerial skills are delegated.
;-)
Of course, he doesn't do the delegating himself - that's hard work. He's got a guy that delegates for him.
[Props to The Daily Show.]
The scientists I know take a much more... intelligent point of view, that is, "I might be right, I might be wrong." Interestingly enough, some religious folks I know say that, too.
If facts prove the scientist was wrong, then the scientist updates his hypothesis to match the observed facts. This is called the scientific method. With it, science is self-optimizing. If facts prove the Bible wrong, then the religious person changes the FACTS to match the Bible. How often does the Bible get updated with new information? It doesn't.
Science can do amazing things, like saving lives and sending humans into space. What has religion done for us lately?
cpeterso
No text.
Play Command HQ online
If there are many gods - and again, if there's one, why not many; what kind of ecological niche has but a single individual in it? - then while some gods may be preferable to others in various contexts, the most evil of gods is a god who insists that the other gods are not worthy of worship and respect. I'll leave deduction of the names of these evil gods as an exercise for the reader (but pay attention to who our worst enemies (domestically as well as internationally) worship, and look to ideologies other than "religion" too).
But isn't Wall really a polytheist? Looks to me like he's made the sow's ear of Christianity into a purse that can hold the treasures of many gods, rather than being the exclusive sort of evil I've despised above. Similarly the midaeval Xians retained a healthy dose of polytheism by transforming many of the old gods into archangels and saints - a kludge, but a good one until free worship of the many gods can be fully restored.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Uh, what is it?
Logic demands faith that the axioms are true, because without axioms, logic cannot prove anything. There is no way to prove axioms true or false, and by Godel's Theorem, it's possible for some things to be false, but not provable and some things to be true but not provable.
If you want something specific in math, look up the "Axiom of Choice". It has been proven that the "Axiom of Choice" can't be proven or disproven. Some mathematicians have faith it's true, while others are convinced it isn't because it leads to wierd conclusions.
If you want something specific in physics, look up the uniform law axiom. It states that all physical laws are constant no matter where you are in the universe. For all we know, each point in space may have a different set of laws, yet they are so similar, we can't detect them (and may never be able to do so in the lifetime of our species). Is this true? Who knows? But physicist have faith in it, because if they didn't, the world would be too complicated to understand. Physicists have no choice but the believe in "spherical cows".
> The beauty of religion, and why it can persist
> in the face of reason, and even seduce
> intelligent people like Larry Wall, is that the
> parameters of every definition are endlessly
> malleable.
This is also true of science. The sun *was* the center of the universe and all facts proved it. Newton's law *was* "the one true law" and all facts proved it. But as more facts appeared, scientists decided to add more parameters and get something that worked. Some people chose to add those parameters to something complex that simplified to "the obvious case" under certain while other's chose to make the "obvious case" more complex. So whether the sun is the center of the universe or the sun is just another point in the universe, only depends on the theory you hold. Both have been shown to be true (look it up!), but one is more popular because the math is simpler in the complicated case.
Loneliness is a power that we possess to give or take away forever
Just a minor point bordering on the unrelated, but the proper name of the biblical God is YHWH (see Isaiah 42:8). The Jews never actually pronounced it, as a sign of reverence, but it is commonly transliterated as Yahweh. For a long time it was mistakenly thought to be Jehovah, because the word "Adonai" was always written on top of YHWH (to prevent the accidental pronounciation of the Name, IIRC). You won't find it in the verses of the Bible because translaters always substitute it with LORD (in small caps). But if you flip to the introductory notes in the front, there should be an explanation.
For all of you who read Cryptonomicon, you might recall a joke about buying a pack of Magic cards and finding one with the large letters YHWH printed on it.
Perl's not a hammer, it's a swiss army chainsaw.
First - Larry thanks for doing an interview for Slashdot.
Second - Thanks for Perl. I get to program with it everyday at my job and it has made a great carrear for me and an enjoyable past time outside of work.
Third - If you really believe
B) God is good to people who really look for him
and you have not read the Quran then you have not really looked hard enough for Him.
If you have read it and are still lead astray by Christianity, then I respect you and will not judge you for it. For judging is for God not man.
10) How to get people to take Perl seriously
by kin_korn_karn
I'm a perl programmer who uses it daily. The push is on from the C?O types to get rid of Perl, even though a bunch of us here know it and are very proficient and fast with it.
Bad experiences perhaps? I've seen some bad perl, and some good. What have you shown your CXO lately?
The new standard is Java with web services and all that other BS. This sickens me, because a) I'm biased towards Perl and b) I know Java is simply a fad language and the overhead/infrastructure only serves to give do-nothing architect types jobs.
I think a) is implied by b) here, have you worked with java at all? It doesn't look like it from this post.
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.
If you are so smart why are you not in charge?
What do you think it would take to get people to take Perl seriously as a programming language [again]?
perhaps some solid implementations of the RMI, JNDI, EJB/servlet modules in perl. Scalable modules are something that I think keeps perl with the sysadmin. Moving beyond a single server/instance implementation is where java's speed of development takes it. Use a wrench for tightening a nut, and a hammer for driving a nail. Writing and app server in perl is like changing your oil filter with a screw driver, hopefully perl 6 will change this.
Is widespread use of Perl a goal of yours, or do you not care?
I'd actually like to see more Java/Perl integration. I've worked with both and like things about both. Perl as a parser has no equal, and the concept that everything is a string is a god send sometimes, but Java has some great modules that allow you to architect and implement horizontally scalable applications quickly. Type casting, memory leaks, and some problems I've run into regarding the classloaders can drive you crazy with java though.
My co-workers keep demonstrating magic tricks... turning pipes into python... making c look like ruby... unleashing a plague of locusts on exchange servers... all as proof of the power of their gods. Can you smite their firstborn or something? Just to shut them up? Thanks.
No deity has that right, imaginary or not.
--
And playing the Valkyrie is like playing Bison in Street Fighter.
Play Command HQ online
Sort of the, "if you have a hammer everything looks like a nail argument" :). I've personally come to love Java after having been a Perl programmer initially. Why? Because I found that most of what I wanted to do, Java did, rather easily. I'll admit though that occasionally I do something silly like do parsing of something in Java because I've almost completely forgotten how to do perl from disuse.
:)
Java isn't a fad, it's incredibly well suited to certain tasks, just like perl is. I'm not going to write device drivers in perl or java, and I'm not going to write a distributed application in perl or C. So as long as Java does what I need, I'll use it. Then when it doesn't I'll go learn the next thing, as long as it runs on something other than windows
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
One of the things I like about the whole open source movement is that someone like Larry, who honestly (and probably correctly) says "I haven't an executive bone in my body" can get some of the kudos he undoubtedly deserves.
...., Larry has created a tool that literally thousands of people use - and value - every day. Respect, man.
Whatever the theological arguments about perl vs python vs Java vs
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
However, as scripture teaches us, God's kid brother, Satan, was goofing around with early yeast prototypes while God wasn't looking and accidentally created beer.
The problem with beer is that it takes less time to brew than wine. This led to a problem. The finest vine-growing areas on the planet are in Australia and South Africa. Satan tempted the fine people of these areas with beer. The results are well-documented. Wine production has been delayed by centuries.
For the True Rapture to take place, Australians and South Africans must be kept away from beer long enough for them to get the wine right. They are so close to perfection.
That's why the truly religious mission is so hard. I have chosen to follow the One True Path.
I'm ridding the world of beer, one pint at a time.
18. We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not.
1. Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him.
That's right, when you believe that Jesus is the Christ, you cannot sin! Isn't being saved great!
He didn't answer any of the serious questions challenging his ideas, either.
Monthy python wrote a song about it.
Its basically about the fact that is god created everything, he also purpusefully created siphillis and ugly people...
You can't take the sky from me...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
As far as the Larry Wall answers go, I think the most important one had to do with testing one's own slogans. So while it's safe to say that TIMTOWTDI is still strong, I was floored by Larry's admission that there was indeed something to think about in the "Perl makes easy things easy and hard things possible" line. Now, if there's time and energy to ponder another imponderable slogan, I'd suggest a second look be given to the "perl is a diagonal language" (rather than an orthogonal language) notion. That one has always worried me. If I had to get picturesque about it, I would observe that a Bishop in chess is the most Diagonal piece, while the rook is slightly more powerful for being Orthogonal. But, of course, the Queen combines both qualities, and is more powerful than the other two put together. Perl should be like that (and Ruby tries to be like that).
OK, so that one *is* pretty cheesy, but I think that it might be true. :-)
Babar
If you study nature you will see that it has logic and some sort of order. We think that we invented science but forget that nature teached us math, chemestry, physiscs, etc. Science is in nature therefore some sort of intelligence/will must have created it, that something is God. It may not be the God from the Bible, or Koran but I think it is the simplest definition of God. It is a simple concept the we (as always) have made really complicated (a bunch of religions that aren't 100% right nor 100% wrong).
I think Larry is right, God exists, and if you need proof just look around. Belive in God not in a specific religion. I think that was what Jesus tried to tell us, but we didn't got the message.
why would anybody who's not at least passively interested in Perl want to know what the creator of Perl says
For the same reason that I enjoy reading (or listening to) Guido van Rossum and Bjarne Stroustrup. Someone who has created a successful programming language might have a somewhat interesting perspective. I say might because most of the Stroustrup I've read reinforces my negative opinions on his language, but that's for alt.mindless.cheerleadering
Then again, there is more oppertunity for Christians to share their point of view with non-Christians in these kinds of discussions.
So let's look at what we have in common. I think we both agree that the Christian life is better than the frat-boy life. I think we both agree that walking in the path of the holy spirit is a very good thing. I think be both agree that God personally loves us; that this universe is not just some kind of automation which magically came in to being. I think we both agree that God is at work and guiding our lives (in my case, God is leading me towards learning Spanish).
When I was an atheist, my main objection with Christianity was that these people were, from my point of view, these narrow-minded idiots who did not accept the overwhelming scientific evidence that the earth is about 4 billion years old, just as Christians used to belive that the earth is flat and that the sun rotates around the earth. I still believe that the earth is 4 billion years old. I still believe in evolution, even though that is a dirty word with many Christians. I also believe in Jesus' sacrifice on the cross for my sins.
- Sam (let's agree to disagree on the hell issue)
Christianity and Islam have the dubious honors of being religions which convey this single common human mythology in a way that causes a lot of confusion. The splintering into sects that Christianity has gone through for hundreds of years is the result of people trying to debug Christianity without doing a total rewrite. If we compared religions to computers, Christianity would land somewhere between ENIAC and a Vic 20. Modern man has plenty of cultural basis to use the teachings of the Vic 20, but two thousand year old stories that often weren't well-written to start with don't help us much surprisingly enough.
Who's up for starting a new religion project on sourceforge? I really don't think we can fail any worse than our predecessors. :-)
--
Free software isn't free, but expensive software is expensive.
God is real. Hell is very real and you REALLY DO NOT want to go there (There is a book called the "Divine Revelation of Hell" by Mary K. Baxter that speaks to this). I can personally testify to God's presence in my life since I accepted Him. Years ago, I did not know who God was nor could I understand this "church stuff." I had picked up the Bible a few times at the age of 12 and read the book of Matthew, within my heart, I knew there was something powerful and special going on, but I just didn't get it. 8 years ago, I began attending this church... as soon as I entered... I felt something different... I was MOVED. From that point on my life change, I sort of ignored the church a little and just began to seek God on my own, reading diligently, praying, etc... well I finally struck something better than GOLD!!!! I connected with God!!!!! From that time forward my life has changed. Because of my sincere heart, God comes to me and warns me of things that are going to happen. This happens maybe 2 times a week. He even warned me that something bad was going to happen before the World Trade Center tragedy... In dreams He was showing me foreigners and guns.... and lots of deaths... but I just didn't get it. Thru dreams at night, He comes in and shows me the technical operations of the computer to help me keep my job. He forewarns me who to be careful of before I even get a job... down to the the very color of the person's hair... he corrects me when I'm living wrong... and He comforts me... HIS NAME IS GOD. Because I obey, and believe, He comes to me. If you believe, and accept, He will come to you also. If you chose not to believe, you will burn in eternal fires, lakes of fire, with demons tormenting you for the rest of your eternal life. Sadly, you will feel the fire. Hell is in the center of the earth, and there are souls there that are tormented day and night because they too did not believe or would not live according to God's Word ('The Bible'). The devil's very purpose is for you not to believe, then He can have you with him. He will turn on you. Disbelief, is the perfect setup. God loves everyone. Every breath that you take is because of God. However, there is is a bad spirit out there also. God has given us "freedom of choice." He wants us to come freely, He will not twist your arm. Every command that He has given is for our own good. If you obey,your soul will have peace and love forever. The peace that surpasses all understanding. Do not try to rely on your 5-senses. If you don't understand, it's okay... take a step of faith and SEEK HIM, chase him more diligently than you chased science. If a church has disappointed you in the past, find another one. Do not set your standards by man, because man will fail you. Set your standards by JESUS, he is the measuring stick... HE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN. There will be a day, when the very words from this letter will revisit you. I hope and pray that you CHANGE before it is too late. I do not frequent this list often, and I will never be on this list again. If you need further guidance, read the Bible and have a talk with God, He can dirct you better than I.
Ironically, in some languages (aka French for sure) "to believe" commonly means "I think but I am not sure", there is doubt. However, for a believer from any religion, "to believe" means much more than "to be convinced". A believer is completly convinced (or he is supposed to be ;-), this is faith.
;-)
:-)
Well, starting from the "religious" definition here is my comment.
I'm making a distinction between beliefs and (...) thinks
Right, there is a difference between these 2.
I may think the girl next door loves me.
I may believe / I have faith she loves me.
"belief" is related to thought (think), but it is much deeper. If I think she loves me, this is a possibility. I will probably try to prove it.
But when I believe she loves me (in a way a believer "believes") then I am convinced she loves me. Generally this is based upon some proof (she told me or lots of facts show me her affection).
The same goes with your familly.
Do you "think" or do you "believe" people close to you love you ?
How do you know this ? (remember "belief" is faith so it is conviction that is subjective knowledge).
You probably know it from experience, your own personnal one.
As far as I am concerned, I have never actively looked for God. Until He found me. Someone just explained to me what Jesus did and what were the consequences of my acts. I did not actively looked for God, but I accepted to listen to that person. I realised how crap/nasty was my life and how deep was Jesus' love. I just could not do otherwise than accept it. Why ? Just because God told me. Not with words in my head, but with conviction in my heart. The guy himself did nothing but tell me what is in the Bible. Then I had to decide whether I wanted to continue my way or to try to live with Him. I decided to stop doing stupid things and to try to follow the path Jesus showed in the Gospel. I invited Jesus in my life.
So here comes from belief / faith : From the deepest part of your heart. Not from the mind.
If you really want to know whether He does not exist, just do as you would with anyone you never saw. Ask him to proove his existence to you. If he exists he will show you, if he does not exists you have no risk, He will never answer you.
This is slighly like the SETI program. Lots of people believe ETs exists, so they scan the sky. It they exist and do not try to obfuscate traces of their existence, then we must find some proove someday. This is good reasonning. Therefore why not doing the same with God ? The Bible tell us God want to be known by us, but the books also say He is reluctant to force himself to us. He waits for you to invite Him in your heart & life. When He will show himself to the whole earth there will be no more place for free acceptance. Do you doubt in the existence of the sun ? Well the Revelation book (the Apocalypse) tell us that the day He will reveal himself to anyone, this will be Jugdment Day. And it will be too late the book states.
So the question is not is there an Entity somewhere ? Is it convenient to believe in something or something else ?
The big question is how to know if He exists ?
And the Bible answers : "Ask God to proove His existence to you." Noone can proove it to you. Noone can live your life. Noone can go deep inside the kernel of your heart but the best Hacker even who created the best AI (Astonishing Intelligence) ever
When someone talk to me about his friend, I can invent many reasons why not to meet her, but if I really want to know whether she is so nice I have to see her. Any excuse just really mean I do not want to meet her.
Therefore if you do not want to ask God the Big question about his existence, just tell others you do not to know God, and do not answer anything else. It would be a lie.
But take your responsability in case He really exists... Because He will do the same with you as you did with Him : when He will reveal himself he won't want to meet you...
Who takes the bargain ? Do you just think or believe ? Have a nice day and GBY
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
What a load of rubish.
I wish more "Christians" would take the time to read what Jesus actually said.
Interestingly most atheists I know (and myself) have a moral code that closely reflects what Jesus really said and not what "Christians" say he said.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You have just made one person quite amazingly happy. I actually had never heard of Joseph Campbell - I'll have to look it up, definitely! I had been terrified all of this time that I'm the only one who had thought that the questions that religion/mythology raised were worth studying in a scientific, rigorous manner.
:)
:)
As per the new religion project, I don't know. Some times I feel so strongly about how bad many of these religions are messing it up that I really want to, but I just don't think that my brain is wired right for it. I'd be a contributor, though!
Thank you very much for writing this - you've really relieved a lot of my fears about humanity.
How do you know eating a breakfast is good and healthy ? Because from day 1 you ate. So there must be a day 1. Therefore to take your own phrase "apply the same rigour to something even *more* fundemental than that" :-)) Obviously you do not have "past evidence" that god exists and can answer to you. But if you never try to talk to him, how can you know ?
If during all your life you never prepared any lunch, how can you know that's easy or not to cook pasta ? If you never tasted oisters how can you tell you do not like the taste ?
The main problem is that we just accept easily things that were told during childhood. But it gets harder with age. Our intelligence make a wall. When you are young to just eat (sometime nasty things). When you are older you try to know things without putting you at risk.
If I give you a phonenumber and tell you the guy there is nice and can even help you. In order to know whether I tell you the truth or not you have to give him a call.
You can argue with me you don't know him yet so you won't phone him. You may think that's crap and the guy cannot or do not want to help you. But do not tell me he does not exist. Because you do not want to talk to him does not imply he does not exist. And it does not mean he does not want to get in touch with you.
More than one century ago you might even thought that the black device (the phone) does nothing and it is stupid to talk into it since everyone just knows by experience that there only exist one way to speak to someone : being in the same place.
Well, nowadays you can call anyone even without any cable connexion, with your mobilephone. How do you know it works ? Because you tested it once. Because someone told you (presumably your parents) that it is natural to speak in the device. So you tried it. And it worked. When you were young you did not want to proove things could work before you try to operate them. You just grabed it and experienced it. This is why you experienced the phone. You were too youg to ask you questions. This is why right now you can tell this is a natural thing.
But imagine going back in 1800 and talking to someone there about what you can do in 2000s. How will he react ? I suppose he will dismiss your talk, and probably consider you are insane. But when he experiments the 2000s devices, his grasp on the world is forever changed. What he once believed is nothing in front of what now stands in from of him. He may decide to continue as before because it is too hard to put aside his whole life and to change everything. Or he may decide to change his life.
So what evidence can proove God exists ? Well not my testimanial, but your own. Just ask him to show you if he exists. If he really exists, he can show himself. Probably not with fire and thunder. Maybe not by plain illumination. But by his actions. Just ask Jesus to act in some way that is not contradictary with his nature and he will do so.
By "not contradictary with his nature" I mean he will probably not give you millions or kill all your enemies. He will probably not make trees fly. But if you are in trouble with people against you He will surely act so that the situation changes in your favor. Why ? Just because 2000 years ago Jesus gave his life for my sins and for yours to be cancelled in front of God the Father. Because sins are cancelled nothing stands between you and god but your own decision not to meet him. And if Jesus gave his life for your sins to be erased, don't you thing he will manifest himself if you ask him for help ? His sacrifice beeing to clean the path between you and god, don't you think he can do just a small thing that can help you believe in him ?
Imagine Lary Wall (put the famous name you want here) tells you he is ready to meet you if you need any help. Would you tell that it is false just because no famous guy offered this to you ? Sad because lots of famous guys are easily reached everday on newsgroups (for the least). And the fact that you never did this (or maybe you did ?) does not change the truth. You just have to try to know.
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
No, playing monk is like playing bison in street fighter.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
the gospel tells Jesus is the Word of God. So he is the messenger and the message :-)
;-p
and why worshipping Jesus ? Because he is God born from a woman (not from a man and a woman). Mary was inseminated by the Holy Spirit 2000 years before Dolly, and people say the Bible is full of impossible stories ? Science itself proove a woman can infant by insemination... so why not the rest of the story ?
For the existence of Jesus as someone who walked on earth and was a jewish leader, even atheist historicians agree he is a historical character (not a fictionous).
When historians work on characters who lived thousands years ago they sometime have fewer sources than the books of the bible, and it is generally enough. So why should we be more critical with religious matters ?
If you are sick and tired, why you you spend so much time reading comments that deep in the thread ?
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
I'm not sure if you'll see this, but just in case. I don't know what prompted you to respond to my post, but I'm confused. I've reread it, and I still don't see why you assumed I wasn't a Christian. I was simply pointing out a difference between science and religion, and how that applied to the post I was responding to.
Reagardless, I'm a Christian. Christian reformed, to be exact. Personally, I've found C S Lewis to have the best books to point people to, but that's mostly a matter of taste.
Science may someday discover what faith has always known.
That is the god that is going to win the war, for keeping the future for itself.
Rwe obliged 2 save our future by choosing:O3 hole-greenhouse effect instead of accepting everydays gossip-nonsense chat?
There is a whole lot of things to tell about this. But I will keep it short.
;-)
In the book of Exodus, God freed his people, he showed himself directly and did extraordinary things. And the people just did the opposite of what he commanded.
1 And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.
8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
At some point limits had to be set.
But God also did not renounce to his words. He said he would give the country to Abraham's descendants and He did so.
34 Therefore now go, lead the people unto the place of which I have spoken unto thee: behold, mine Angel shall go before thee: nevertheless in the day when I visit I will visit their sin upon them.
The last bit anounces Jesus to come to clean our sins. That way we can stand before God without being under the condamnation of our faults that have been erased, because Jesus died instead of us.
Another thing to help you understand. When one of your member (your foot for instance) gets corrupted. If physicians cannot save it and it dies. Would you prefer to keep your foot and die because of it or would you prefer them to cut it ? God was not joyfull to get rid of the (bad) part of Israel. But He had to do so in order to save the rest who were not (yet ?) corrupted.
You will see all this when you read the rest of the book. As usual, it is dangerous and unfair to argue only on a few sentences.
Good reading.
Before Jesus came on earth and gave his life for us, the whole humanity was under the gouvernment of the Law : God cannot stand sin and someone found guilty must be condemned. But even during the Old Testament God proved to be reluctant to sentence judgement. He pusponed or cancelled many judgements. But at some point it was too much. When you have a child you can choose not to punish him as soon as he does a bad/evil thing. You can choose the path of love and compassion. But at some point you have to punish. Because you are the parent and you must set limits. When parents punish kids and forbid them to see their friend, are parent evil ? Would you say they do not love their children ?
As a parent you adapt the punishion to what was done. The exemple you presented was *very* severe because God was giving his words to Moses while many Jewish were worshipping a golden calf. He was just giving the first comandment not to worship another god...
For the "joyfull relationship", if someone you saved the life betrayed you in return the next day, would you be happy ? If you answer "yes" then I advise you some counselling (or prozac
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
I am perfectly open to the idea God exists as I have already stated. Praying does nothing for this.
:-) As for the risk, we can only discover new territories by taking some risks. But I agree it is fool to always risk everything. Myself I consider God as a safe and magnificiant "territory" to discover. I do not take the risk to leave it. Or to be honest when I do leave that safe place it is generally not long before I come back. So who I am to tell you to leave that safe place you live in ? I would tell you I prefer not to leave my god for another one even though you tell me he is waiting for me. But what if someday I realize my god is fake and my life is not safe ? Maybe someday it will be your case. Maybe you will ever be confident in what you already experimented. That is wise.
:-( Yes I failed to explain why you must change your life. It is not important. Because God does not tell us : "you must change". He invites us.
:-)
;-)
I've seen no good evidence so I feel I cannot believe as yet.
What praying will do is merely confuse me, as it used to. I am not confused at the moment. You can't verify what I am saying you'll have to take my words on trust.
I am also perfectly open to the idea some girl exists somewhere that I will marry. I have seen no good evidence so do I believe she cannot exist ? Does seeking for someone do anything ? Could it help me to find whether she exists or not if I look around ?
I agree. If I look around I may get confused and ask myself "Is that girl well enough for me ?". Maybe she is, maybe not. I will probably ask me this question a few times before I get an answer. The conviction she is the woman I want to live with.
If you come and tell me some of your friend is great for me, I may not trust your words. But if I never dare to meet her I am sure of one thing. She definitly is not someone I can communicate with. She will not really exist for me before I get in touch with her. She is merely an idea.
After all it's probably better that way, since I am ok alone at home. No one to tell me to wash the dishes. No one who wants things I do not. No conflict. No change in my life.
Yes. You are right. until you decide it might be interesting to change your life. And I know very much what I am saying because right now I have not decided if it is better for me to live with someone or to be single. There are so much freedom in being single. But also so many happyness to be two...
1/ some religions state their god(s) is on another plane of interest. He is more concerned in his stuff than in ours. When he does not answer it means he has something else to do, etc... The Bible tells us we are the concern of god. We are at the center of his preoccupations. Ok not every religion say that. Sorry I do not undestand the rest of the sentence. I am not a native english speaker.
2/ I have not the answer to that. I am not omniscient
But the Bible tells man's wisdom is foolishness to God. And God's wisdom is foolishness to man. (I do not remember the verse)
3/ I cannot tell you why you should change your life. Reasons why I changed mine are not necesseraly the same reasons that someone else in my church. Yours are not mines. I can only testify what I live (I did in some other comments). There is no reason why you should change your life. But when you want to, then God will be here to answer. Faith has nothing to do with arguments. We could speak for years. I could pray for you to see "the light". But nothing will happen until you say "well, let's dare it". It is difficult to express what I mean. Words are so limited regarding to ideas
That's fine because I'm not angry
I did not think you were
you do what you think is right and good for you
Thanks.
I'm quite happy with my position as it stands though, because it is consistent and it is safe.
I wanted to say the same, but in fact since the day I know God I would add it is more and more consistant & safer
GBY
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
When looking for things you have to apply a proper discipline in what you do. It is no good me looking for the existence of dark matter by looking at some astronomical figures and having faith that they prove what I was looking for.
Similarly it is no good me praying and having faith in the existence of a God in the hope that they will reward that. That is, after all, what you're saying here. I say I am open, you say that it is not enough, and that I must ask God to reveal himself with my heart ready to accept him. This really means I have to believe in order to get anywhere. And that is clearly wrong.
Always a quagmire!
The subject? Because yours did not make much sense so I decided to go the whole hog. :-)
I have no theory as to God, really.
There are no scientific tests to bemade though.
Praying is not scientific. How can I know I really meant God to appear in my heart of hearts? What about my subconcious desires I may not fully understand etc.?
And what if god does get in touch? What test is ther for knowing if it realy is god? I can't just go "oooh I feel this is god" - I can fool myself just as much as anyone else can.
Maybe I'll think it was the way I nearly got run over but saved by a random stranger - maybe I'll believe that stranger was god. Maybe it is the way the sun shines every morning for a month. Maybe I'll think God made it shine for me.
Maybe I'll see a burning bush.
I am not testing a condition so it's hard to do this sort of thing. with any sort of rigour.
Now...historical evidence for the existence of Jesus and evidence he was the son of god. That's another matter.
That can be tested or at least examined for veracity.
And once again I started to make it short and its one full page. Really sorry for the length. I can hardly help doing shorter.
:-)
:-)) :-)
:-)
:-( maybe modern english bible exist ?)
... subjectivity (if you consider the Bible's miracles are just tales or not). But if he really is God and Son of God as stated in the Bible and if he is really resurrected from the dead after he died to cover our sins. Then If all this is true it means he will answer when you pray, because the Bible says so. If he is not resurrected he is not God and all the rest is crap. Then no danger to pray. He will not answer. But if you ask for something and you get it (unless it is stupid like "I want my boss to die and get his job") then it prooves the whole thing.
Do you have a cup of tea next to you ?
The subject? Because yours did not make much sense so I decided to go the whole hog.
Well, mine was related to my comment where I used an example based on Pasta as an argument
I have no theory as to God, really.
From your previous comments I would rather say you think "He may exists but it will confuse me if I seek whether something is from god or not. Therefore I do nothing." Sorry if I am wrong I do not want to say *this* is what you think. Just my interpretation.
If this is right it is big problem indeed. You can not pray because of the risk to endanger yourself. I do not criticize. I know myself how it is hard to take risks (Nowadays God encourages me to take more and more risks and try new things, but it is hard).
Another "theory" might be "he does not exists" or "he just answers to perfect people" or "he does not care for me"... For you it seems rather to be "I do not want to know right now"... well in fact you do not need God to know whether this is true or not.
There are no scientific tests to bemade though.
Ok, no scientific test regarding to God, but you can apply scientific protocol when you seek. Einstein theories seemed ludicrous to famous scientists of the early XXth century. However, some people applied scientific and rigorous study his ludicrous theories and proved them to be right. What is "science" ? What is "scientific" ? Something labeled as such before experiment or after ?
Philosophy is not science, but philosophers apply scientific rigor in the reasonment to determine whether they are right or not. After you say, "ok the reasonment is good, do I want to live that way ? The Bible's way ?"
praying is not scientific
Right, the same way speaking is not. Because "to pray" just means "talk to God" according to the Bible.
How can I know I really meant God to appear in my heart of hearts? What about my subconcious desires I may not fully understand etc.
Words you spell may not be what you think. But when you say them you know if they express what you want / think or not. You do not need to go through an analysis in order to know if you said truth or not. You just know. At least I do.
If your deep desires are not expressed, you subconscious will let you know (dreams probably). I would say, just let it in its side. Life is sweeter when simple.
And what if god does get in touch?
Maybe it is the real question you ask ? Is it ? And what will you do next if He exists ?
What test is ther for knowing if it realy is god? (...) I am not testing a condition so it's hard to do this sort of thing. with any sort of rigour.
If God is God, then ask for something you cannot do yourself. Ask him for help. Generally situations / problems where you have nothing to loose are good tests. If it improves you cannot say it is because of you. Let it be simple. Your are about to loose your job and no opportunities around ? Your debts are abyssal ? You cannot do anything yourself. But God will if he really exists. Do you have to question yourself to know whether the solution is from God ? If you ask someone for help and you receive help, who has done it ?
This is what I mean by test. You ask and see the result. But if after the result you tweak in order to proove this is unrelated to your prayer, then it is problaly not a rigorous study of events. I hope it is better expressed.
An example, my 1st job, I did not know whether I wanted to apply as a developper or a system administrator. Finaly I am doing both. The company found me, I did not even thought it was possible to do both so it just fell in my hands. I was really surprised. You may say that's fairly good luck. But is it surprising when your Friend is The One who throws the Big Dices of life ?
Usually, God's solutions are very surprising. Not necessarily new to the world, but we usually think of other solutions. And his are better.
I do not know what you already prayed. Neither do I know what God prepared for you. But what I know is he will answer if you ask. If you ask him to proove his existence, he will do so. Conviction will come to you. If you ask him help, he will give it.
I cannot tell you what to pray to test. I just do not know. It depends on what you live.
Luke 11.9 And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
10 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
11 If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent?
12 Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?
God sees us as sons and daughters.
(NB : many French versions are much simpler, they are not old french
Now...historical evidence for the existence of Jesus and evidence he was the son of god. That's another matter. That can be tested or at least examined for veracity.
Yes, historical evidence of the existence of Jesus are not questionned by the vast majority of history schoolars. I mean even those not christian.
As for He being son of God, I would say it is more subject to
I have writen to pray Jesus and in other place to pray God, in fact the Bible says to pray God the Father in the name of Jesus or Jesus. Because he is the bridge between the Saintety of God and us.
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
Kepler, Newton, Eistein... here is a list of some of the major ones:
"Remember Larry, one cannot propel one's self forward by patting one's own back."
Let the guy be fucking proud in himself for attempting a challenge, huh? Sounds like you wish you were doing more.
9 For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name,
:: NASB
10 so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:9-11
I'm a Christian but I've a bit of a skeptical nature myself, and sometimes I seem like a child covering my eyes and thinking Dad has vanished.
3 7.htmlv itro_pra yer.html
:).
Coz even though God has provided a fair bit of evidence of his existence to me, I sometimes have periods where I become doubtful, and it's just not polite to question the existence of a friend just because you can't see the friend (especially in this day and age where we have friends we may never see or touch, but we know they exist).
Honestly are scientific tests enough? I often question scientific tests myself.
But they are helpful so how about:
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_4142
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/01/09/in_
In my personal opinion this test seems to have been done quite properly - the first line people praying only had photos of the people they were praying for. And the people being prayed for didn't know a thing about it.
One cannot be sure that God will make future tests work, after all God has his own agenda, and is not a force or an idol or pet that we can control. Seems God answered someone's prayers many times in a row and so he believed, but after that God stopped answering his prayers, and he asked my friend (a church worker) why, and was rightly told, "Hey God is NOT your _genie_!"
I see an analogy: a father does often oblige his little children, but we are still expected to grow up, and sometimes we should not get what we ask for.
I believe the best convincing is between God and you. That is the most real.
So how about praying?
Sure prayer doesn't seem very scientific. But neither does consciousness. Lots of scientists don't seem to think it's necessary and few care, even though IMHO that's peculiar coz consciousness is the _first_ observation anyone makes. Not light, not sound, not any of the senses.
Most people aren't scientific either, and yet they do matter, and the good news is God cares and loves us and so he sent his son Jesus to die for us and save us.
Strange? Perhaps the dying bit was the flipping of the qubits, or maybe not. Or maybe those who believe will observe a universe where God and they are alive, rather than one with destructive interference. I don't really know how it works - just wild speculation, so don't go holding any of that as truth.
But the main thing is it's good news
Pray, ask God to help you, to show himself to you.
Link.
Well my guess the brick wall effect is because the elegant languages are more prone "only one way to do it".
:).
If there's more than one way to do something "correctly", then there could be a higher chance for a newb like me to succeed, and have fun redoing again.
Whereas if there's only one (maybe obvious) way to do it, the odds probably drop somewhat for me...
I'm trying to learn Lisp. Any tips? So far it seems like Lisp programmers tend to be very smart, efficient and industrious, and so
1) They don't mind writing everything themselves.
2) Everything else is crap anyway - not doing the "right thing".
Whereas with Perl, a lazy but reasonably bright chap like me can easily build on other people's work- modules, talking to all sorts of DBs, other programs, websites etc.
In contrast I found Java very annoying - e.g. whose bright idea was it to have an easy way to find out the number of selected columns in db query, but not have an easy way to find the selected rows? Move to the last row and get the row number? Doh. Do the language authors actually use their language? Java programmers must be extremely hardworking and verbose to boot(StuffWithSuperLongNames2). Man. If I wanted that something like that I'd go back to my 65xx machine code days, calculate my branch offsets by hand, count cycles etc.
Gone soft with age
Link.