A Perl program is correct if it gets the job done before your boss fires you.
The camel has evolved to be relatively self-sufficient. On the other hand, the camel has not evolved to smell good. Neither has Perl.
Easy things should be easy, and hard things should be possible.
Perl doesn’t have an infatuation with enforced privacy. It would prefer that you stayed out of its living room because you weren’t invited, not because it has a shotgun.
You don’t have to know the whole language to use it usefully, you can do baby talk, you can do grown up talk, you can cuss in it, you can write poetry, you can be a playwright, is sort of the idea.
For me, writing is a love-hate relationship.
We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can’t agree on when it’s necessary to compromise.
Doing linear scans over an associative array is like trying to club someone to death with a loaded Uzi.
What is the sound of Perl? Is it not the sound of a wall that people have stopped banging their heads against?
We’re really serious about reinventing everything that needs reinventing.
If someone stinks, view it as a reason to help them, not a reason to avoid them.
Human languages tend to be much more ambiguous than computer languages because humans are much smarter about interpreting the context.
I think the way IBM has embraced the open source philosophy has been quite astonishing, but gratifying. I hope they’ll do very well with it.
I think software patents are a bad idea. Many patents are given for trivial inventions.
I talked about becoming stupid, but I’ve always been stupid. Fortunately I’ve been just smart enough to realize that I’m stupid.
While I have historically been a late worker, you know, sometimes I even like to get up early and see what’s happened in the few hours of the night and then I often take a nap in the middle of the day just to sort of make up for stretching my day out.
I think operating systems work best if they’re free and open. Particular applications are more likely to be proprietary.
I think computer science, by and large, is still stuck in the Modern age.
I still drive my 1977 Honda Accord. The paint is almost all worn off. It’s still running.
I’ve decided I don’t want to be a manager. Every time you try to be responsive to your employees, they say you’re being reactive and not proactive. And when you try to be proactive, they accuse you of being capricious and arbitrary. So I don’t wanna be a manager...