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Larry Wall

Larry Wall originally created Perl while a programmer at Unisys. He now works full time guiding the future development of the language as a researcher and developer at O'Reilly & Associates. Larry is known for his idiosyncratic and thought-provoking approach to programming, as well as for his groundbreaking contributions to the culture of free software programming. He is the principal author of the bestselling Programming Perl, known colloquially as "the Camel book."

Programming is Hard, Let's Go Scripting...
Larry Wall's annual State of the Onion describes the state of Perl, the language and the community. In his 11th address, he discussed the past, present, and future of scripting languages, including the several dimensions of design decisions important to the development of Perl 6. [Dec 6, 2007]

The State of the Onion 10
In Larry Wall's tenth annual State of the Onion address, he talks about raising children and programming languages and balancing competing tensions and irreconcilable desires. [Sep 21, 2006]

The State of the Onion 9
In Larry Wall's ninth annual State of the Onion address, he explains Perl 6's Five Year Plan, how Perl programmers are like spies (or vice versa), and how open source can learn from the intelligence community. [Sep 22, 2005]

The State of the Onion
Larry Wall's eighth annual State of the Onion address from OSCON 2004 related screensavers to surgery to Perl and the community. [Aug 19, 2004]

Apocalypse 12
Larry Wall explains how objects and classes are to work in Perl 6. [Apr 16, 2004]

State of the Onion 2003
Larry Wall's annual report on the state of Perl, from OSCON 2003 (the seventh annual Perl conference) in Portland, Oregon in July 2003. In this full length transcript, Larry talks about being unreasonable, unwilling, and impossible. [Jul 16, 2003]

Apocalypse 6
Larry continues his unfolding of the design of Perl 6 with his latest Apocalypse - this time, how subroutines are defined and called in Perl 6. [Mar 7, 2003]

Apocalypse 5
In part 5 of his design for Perl 6, Larry takes a long hard look at regular expressions, and comes up with some interesting ideas... [Jun 4, 2002]

Apocalypse 4
In his latest article explaining the design of Perl 6, Larry Wall tackles the syntax of the language. [Jan 15, 2002]

Apocalypse 3
Larry Wall brings us the next installment in the unfolding of Perl 6's design. [Oct 2, 2001]

Larry Wall: Apocalypse Two
Larry Wall produces the next episode in his series of "Apocalypses": glimpses into the design of Perl 6. This week, he explains how Perl 6 will differ from Perl 5 in terms of chapter 2 of the Camel Book: fundamental data types, variables and the context and scoping of the language. [May 3, 2001]

Apocalypse 1: The Ugly, the Bad, and the Good
With breathless expectation, the Perl community has been waiting for Larry Wall to reveal how Perl 6 is going to take shape. In the first of a series of "apocalyptic" articles, Larry reveals the ugly, the bad, and the good parts of the Perl 6 design process. [Apr 2, 2001]

State of the Onion 2000
Larry Wall's annual report on the state of Perl, from TPC 4.0 (the fourth annual Perl conference) in Monterey in July 2000. In this full length transcript, Larry talks about the need for changes, which has led to the effort to rewrite the language in Perl 6. [Oct 24, 2000]

3rd State of the Onion
Larry explains the "good chemistry" of the Perl community in his third State of the Onion speech. [Aug 30, 1999]

Perl, the first postmodern computer language
Larry Wall's talk at Linux World justifies Perl's place in postmodern culture. He says that he included in Perl all the features that were cool and left out all those that sucked. [Mar 9, 1999]

2nd State of the Onion
Larry Wall's keynote address from 1998 Perl Conference. There is also a RealAudio version. [Aug 25, 1998]

The Culture of Perl
In this keynote address for the first Perl Conference, Larry Wall talks about the key ideas that influence him and by extension the Perl culture. [Aug 20, 1997]