Larry Wall (born 1954) is an American programmer and author, best known as the creator of Perl. His background as a linguist influenced Perl’s unique design, which borrows concepts from natural language.
Background
Wall studied linguistics and considered becoming a missionary before turning to programming. His linguistic training shaped his view of programming languages as human communication tools, not just technical notation.
Creating Perl
Wall created Perl in 1987 while working as a systems administrator. He needed to generate reports from text files across multiple systems. Frustrated with the limitations of existing tools, he created Perl to combine their best features.
Linguistic Influence
Wall applied linguistic principles to language design:
- Context sensitivity: Like natural languages, Perl interprets based on context
- Multiple expressions: Many ways to say the same thing, like human languages
- Huffman coding: Common operations have shorter syntax
- Borrowing: Taking good ideas from other languages freely
The Three Virtues
Wall famously defined the three virtues of a great programmer:
- Laziness: Drives automation and reusable code
- Impatience: Drives efficient, fast programs
- Hubris: Drives writing code others can’t criticize
Later Work
Wall spent years developing Perl 6 (now called Raku), a complete redesign of the language. Though Raku and Perl 5 diverged into separate languages, both continue development.