<p>Don't know if you guys caught this link from slashdot today, but here are my 'Nate Approved' highlights</p><p>Larry Wall excerpts from his talk with computerworld</p><p><a href="http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/270267/-z_programming_languages_perl?pp=1&fp=&fpid=">http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/270267/-z_programming_languages_perl?pp=1&fp=&fpid=</a></p>
<p></p><p><strong>How did the name Perl come about? </strong><br><br>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. <br>
<br></p><p><strong>Do you ever find yourself using the "backronym" Practical Extraction and Report Language at all? </strong><br><br>It is meant to indicate that there is more than way to do it, so we have multiple backronyms intentionally.<br>
<br></p><p><strong>Have you ever seen the language used in a way that was not originally intended? If so, what was it? And did it work? </strong><br></p>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.
<p>-- <br></p>Nate<br>(763)-607-7630<br>