Larry Wall Quotes

A 'goto' in Perl falls into the category of hard things that should be possible, not easy things that should be easy.

I work day-to-day on C# and .Net and work at home two days a week so I can do deep thinking, writing and reflecting.

No one wants one language. There are applications when it's appropriate to write something in C rather than in Java. If you want to write something where performance is much more important than extensibility, then you might want to choose C rather than Java.

This evolution may compromise Java's claim of being simpler than C++, but my guess is that the effort will make Java a better language than it is today.

No matter what, the way to learn to program is to write code and rewrite it and see it used and rewrite again. Reading other people's code is invaluable as well.

Many people tend to look at programming styles and languages like religions: if you belong to one, you cannot belong to others. But this analogy is another fallacy.

At MIT, mostly what I did was documentation. I sort of read things. Wrote some descriptions of various aspects of the file system. Did not really do very much programming at all. At least on Multics.

You've got to be willing to read other people's code, then write your own, then have other people review your code.

Often in writing programs, articulation and clarity are more important than what you actually say.

In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.

I'm probably more interested in sentences than anything else in life.

Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.

Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.

C++ is a horrible language. It's made more horrible by the fact that a lot of substandard programmers use it, to the point where it's much much easier to generate total and utter crap with it.

I have met bright students in computer science who have never seen the source code of a large program. They may be good at writing small programs, but they can't begin to learn the different skills of writing large ones if they can't see how others have done it.

I think that computer programming shows in my writing. Often when I write about computer programmers I'll write about the way that they see the world and they structure the world.

There are more useful systems developed in languages deemed awful than in languages praised for being beautiful - many more.

You become a good writer just as you become a good joiner: by planing down your sentences.

When you program, you want to think you're writing the best possible program for the... for the task you're trying to solve.

Learning to program has no more to do with designing interactive software than learning to touch type has to do with writing poetry

Learning to write programs stretches your mind, and helps you think better, creates a way of thinking about things that I think is helpful in all domains.

We have some writers so abstruse and deep that they drown themselves in their fathomless sentences.

We ought to be keeping in mind that the technology is not just hardware and machinery, it is also software. So you can think of languages of the technology and writing of the technology and the social justice of the technology in what social justice does is reduce impacts on the Earth because the most impact is from the poorest and richest people.

I'm a geek, I like to code, I even like to use spreadsheets when I cook.

Just start the sentence...and see what happens. This is how we write.