[Mpls-pm] interesting tidbit about the perl name and a good argument to choose perl for a project

[Nate Lally]

Don't know if you guys caught this link from slashdot today, but here are my
'Nate Approved' highlights

Larry Wall excerpts from his talk with computerworld

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/270267/-z_programming_languages_perl?pp=1&fp=&fpid=

*How did the name Perl come about? *

I came up with the name as I wanted something with positive connotations.
The name originally had an "a" in it. There was another lab stats language
called Pearl, so I added another backronym. The second one is Pathologically
Eclectic Rubbish Lister.

*Do you ever find yourself using the "backronym" Practical Extraction and
Report Language at all? *

It is meant to indicate that there is more than way to do it, so we have
multiple backronyms intentionally.

*Have you ever seen the language used in a way that was not originally
intended? If so, what was it? And did it work? *
When Clearcase (revision control systems) wrote its device driver in Perl to
access the file system underneath the kernel. The first surprising thing is
that it worked. And the second surprising thing is that it was 10 times
faster than their C code. Generally you would not want to write device
drivers in Perl. Perl 6 maybe, but not Perl 5.

-- 
Nate
(763)-607-7630
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