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Larry Wall On Perl 6, Language Design, and Getting Kids To Code

Posted by timothy on from the putting-a-perl-in-their-heads dept.

M-Saunders writes: Perl 6 has been a long time in the making, but Larry Wall, the language's chief developer, now says it should arrive in time for Christmas. In this interview with Linux Voice, Wall explains why Perl 6 took so long, and describes how his background in linguistics influenced the design of the language. He also discusses ways to get kids interested in coding, and notes that Python has done a better job so far in this respect.

5 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. Read the article, it's full of great quotes by hattig · · Score: 5, Funny

    “People who made early implementations of Perl 6 came back to me, cap in hand, and said “We really need a language designer.””

    “I was almost explicitly told: “Stay out of the implementation! We saw what you did made out of Perl 5”

    “With Perl 6, we found some ways to make the computer more sure about what the user is talking about.” ...

    1. Re:Read the article, it's full of great quotes by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 4, Funny
      How about this one:

      We say in Perl that it's "strangely consistent".

      Because, god knows, if anything in Perl is consistent, it's strange.


      Then there's the use of "Larry Wall" and "language designer" in the same sentence...

  2. Re:To teach kids to code you need an incentive by temcat · · Score: 4, Funny

    You should give him an incentive to do it.

  3. Re:In other news.. by dintech · · Score: 3, Funny

    If I have children, before they are allowed to use the internet, the first thing I'll do is educate them to be careful about the dangers of Perl.

  4. Re:In other news.. by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 3, Funny

    Sure, I'd let my kids play with used syringes and loaded guns, but Perl?? Whaddya think I am, a bad parent?