Author: ANDREW LEONARD
Translation: TACHI / Seeven [AKA]
If there is a lonely Jedi Knight on the Internet (see << Planet Wars >>), then he is larry wall. The inventors of Larry's Perl programming language have worked for free software a lot of age, and they have come out of a different path.
Larry and his perl hackers who have been restricted to UNIX platforms now find them in a larger world: the center of the World Wide Web.
Quietly, Perl makes the work on the Web like a behind-the-scenes hero. Perl is the choice of anywhere Web site administrator. When you ask if they can do something or anything, they will answer: "I bet I can write a perl script to get it."
The character is shy, and the Larry Wall, which is a dear, is not used to it. Sometimes he can always concentrate on his thoughts to be strange to others and him in a room. Most of his time spent will not come over to see his computer and books.
For Larry, Perl is more than just a programming language, but also a way to interested things, such as linguistics, religious beliefs, art and computer science.
That's why learning the Perl language not only adapts to its clumsy grammar, but also to learn its morality. Those who have the second edition of the "Perl Programming" second edition of "Perl Programming" have been well expressed in these virtues.
For example: "We encourage you to carry forward the three major virtues: lazy, dry and arrogant."
However, the fate of Perl is not determined by Larry. Maybe he has won the hearts and feelings of the web site administrator, but the Internet will still have it. Bill Gates, from the previous hackers, now rich capitalists, master a software empire and have a software developer army. He is based on private and cooperative spirit.
Today's war is a market dispute, and millions of money put into marketing activities that win developers. You may have already accepted how the Visual Basic and ActiveX controls such as Microsoft are well, how is Sun's Java that is like a word like.
Perl does not have any marketing activities. You can only hear it from the person who uses it. They are generally passing Perl, just like the hiding of the rebel, only the person who knows knows it (this is why business news is known to it).
If this territory will be ruled by many private language and data formats with new multimedia features, then Perl's success is based on the following simple fact: Internet is still everything about text (Text). The information itself and the meta information indicating its data structure are languages that Perl can understand. Perl writes the program to handle the text perfectly. Whether dealing with log data, generating dynamic pages or extracting information from databases, Perl can do those ordinary things that are doing around Web.
In this interview, "Web Review" is discussed with the Larry Wall, related cultural and associates. Tom Christiansen also participated in discussions and obviously tangually talk, and he is the ideal partner of Larry. TOM likes to have a listener, and he is a living in Professor Perl. His guided Perl programmers are more than anyone.
Whether you are a programmer, this interview record helps you understand why you will hear such a whisper when someone mentioned with Perl: "Remember its power."
