A Conversation with Larry Wall: the creator of Perl talks about language design and Perl
[February 1998]
Kim, Eugene Eric
.
Abstract: In both language size and popularity, the Practical Extraction and Reporting Language (Perl) is probably the biggest of the little languages. While its text- and file-processing capabilities have made it the language of choice for system administrators and web developers, Perl''s virtues as a rapid prototyping tool and full-fledged application language have become apparent as well.Given Perl''s idiomatic nature, it isn''t surprising that Larry Wall, Perl''s creator, has a background in linguistics. Larry is no stranger to useful, free software, having written and given away programs like metaconfig, rn, and patch. His active involvement and ever-present sense of humor -- which permeates his newsgroup posts, source code, and Programming Perl (the book he coauthored with Randal Schwartz) -- is largely responsible for the community that has grown and flourished around the language.A recipient of Dr. Dobb''s 1996 Excellence in Programming Award and currently a developer at O''Reilly & Associates, Larry recently sat down with DDJ technical editor Eugene Eric Kim to discuss the state of Perl, scripting language design, and the importance of culture to a language.
https://librarytechnology.org/document/9422/