Larry’s Keynote At YAPCEU 2010
Larry Wall gave another of his unique keynote addresses at the first day of YAPCEU 2010 here in sunny Pisa (yes the place with the tower)
This year was a little diversion from his usual pattern as Larry was assisted by his better half and his demon seed. Larry told us as a language designer his life is one of siting on the fence, not making up his mind until that one little voice in one ear (his better half) and that other little voice in the other ear (his demon seed) work it out somehow.
Larry also showed us some neat little one line Perl 6 tricks for playing perfect numbers. His demon seed seem very keen on ’6′ as it is the first perfect number.
Larry also talked about the latest high tech ‘buzz word’ that the three piece and office window crowd is bantering about these days: ‘Disruptive Technology’.
Something that may do some things bad but others very well.
Of course he pointed out that PERL was labeled the same way when it first appeared some years ago in the UNIX world. As it broke the cardinal rule in UNIX ‘Do one thing well’, Perl did most things sort of ‘OK’ and very sloppy to start, but got much better later. Sort of the idea that worse is better.
He left us pondering PERL 6 as we all know that it does ‘worse’ better and now that ‘worse’ is better it is the ‘worst’ as being better.
