Perl

In computer programming, Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall, a linguist working as a systems administrator for NASA, in 1987, as a general purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and became widely popular among programmers. Larry Wall continues to oversee development of the core language, and its newest version, Perl 6.

Perl borrows features from other programming languages including C, shell scripting (sh), AWK, sed and Lisp. The language provides powerful text processing facilities without the arbitrary data length limits of many contemporary Unix tools, making it the ideal language for manipulating text files. It is also used for graphics programming, system administration, network programming, applications that require database access and CGI programming on the Web. Perl is nicknamed "the Swiss Army chainsaw of programming languages" due to its flexibility and adaptability.

People (Perl)

Celebrities (Perl)

Randal L. Schwartz

Randal L. Schwartz (born November 22, 1961) is an American author, system administrator and programming consultant. Schwartz is the co-author of several widely used books about Perl, a programming language for computers, and has written regular columns about Perl for several computer magazines. He popularized the Just another Perl hacker signature programs. He is a founding board member of the Perl Mongers, the worldwide Perl grassroots advocacy organization. He is currently a co-host on FLOSS Weekly.

Schwartz's name is also associated with the Schwartzian transform, an algorithm to efficiently sort a list according to a computation, without repeating the computation many times for each element of the list.

Since 1985, Schwartz has owned and operated Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc.

(from wikipedia November 2, 2008)

Founders (Perl)

Larry Wall

Larry Wall (born September 27, 1954) is a programmer and author, most widely known for his creation of the Perl programming language in 1987.
Contents

* 1 Education
* 2 Accomplishments
* 3 Virtues of a programmer
* 4 See also
* 5 References
* 6 External links

Education

Wall earned his bachelor's degree from Seattle Pacific University in 1976.

While in graduate school at UC Berkeley, Wall and his wife were studying linguistics with the intention afterwards of finding an unwritten language, perhaps in Africa, and creating a writing system for it. They would then use this new writing system to translate various texts into the language, among them the Bible. Due to health reasons these plans were canceled, and they remained in the U.S., where Larry instead joined the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory after he finished grad school.

Accomplishments

Wall is the author of the rn Usenet client and the nearly universally used patch program. He has won the International Obfuscated C Code Contest twice and was the recipient of the first Free Software Foundation Award for the Advancement of Free Software in 1998.

Beyond his technical skills, Wall is known for his wit and often ironic sense of humor , which he displays in the comments to his source code or on Usenet. For example: "We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on when it's necessary to compromise," and:

For example, it's been several decades now since a certain set of Bible translations came out, and you'll notice a pattern: the New English Bible, the New American Standard Bible, and the New International Version, to name a few. It's really funny. I suspect we'll still be calling them “new this” and “new that” a hundred years from now. Much like New College at Oxford. Do you know when New College was founded. Any guesses? New College was new in 1379.

He is the co-author of Programming Perl (often referred to as the Camel Book), which is the definitive resource for Perl programmers. He has edited the Perl Cookbook. His books are published by O'Reilly.

Wall's qualification as a linguist is apparent in his books, interviews and lectures. He often compares Perl to a natural language and explains his decisions in Perl's design with linguistic rationale. He also often uses linguistic terms for Perl language constructs, so instead of traditional "variable", "function" and "accessor" he sometimes says "noun", "verb" and "topicalizer".

Wall's Christian faith has influenced some of the terminology of Perl, such as the name itself, a biblical reference to the "Pearl of great price" (Matthew 13:46). [1] Similar references are the function name bless, and the organization of Perl 6 design documents with categories such as apocalypse and exegesis. Wall has also alluded to his faith when he has spoken at conferences, including a rather straightforward statement of his beliefs at the August, 1997 Perl Conference and a discussion of Pilgrim's Progress at the YAPC (Yet Another Perl Conference) in June, 2000.

Wall continues to oversee further development of Perl and serves as the Benevolent Dictator for Life of the Perl project. His role in Perl is best conveyed by the so-called 2 Rules, taken from the official Perl documentation:

1. Larry is always by definition right about how Perl should behave. This means he has final veto power on the core functionality.
2. Larry is allowed to change his mind about any matter at a later date, regardless of whether he previously invoked Rule 1.

Got that? Larry is always right, even when he was wrong.[citation needed]

Virtues of a programmer

Wall along with Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Christiansen writing in the second edition of Programming Perl, outlined the Three Virtues of a Programmer:

1. Laziness - The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it. Hence, the first great virtue of a programmer. Also hence, this book. See also impatience and hubris.
2. Impatience - The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don't just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to. Hence, the second great virtue of a programmer. See also laziness and hubris.
3. Hubris - Excessive pride, the sort of thing Zeus zaps you for. Also the quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won't want to say bad things about. Hence, the third great virtue of a programmer. See also laziness and impatience.