Perl Creator: I blew a raspberry into a modem

Date:
Fri, 13 Aug 2021 15:05:02 +0000

Category:
Satire

Description:
Perl, the popular computer programming language, has been revealed to be an elaborate, decades long prank. I kinda feel bad! I really expected people to figure it out by now, stated Perl creator, Larry Wall. In truth, Perl didnt even Continue Reading

FULL STORY ======================================================================

Perl, the popular computer programming language, has been revealed to be an elaborate, decades long prank.

I kinda feel bad! I really expected people to figure it out by now, stated Perl creator, Larry Wall. In truth, Perl didnt even start as a prank. Not really, anyway. Back in 1988, I was using one of those old-school modems where you put the telephone handset on it. I wanted to see what would happen if I picked up the handset and blew a raspberry into it. So I did. A big, wet, loud raspberry.

My roommate was walking by, noticed all the garbage characters and line noise on my screen, the sheepishly amused Wall continued. He was all like, What
the heck are you doing?. I got embarrassed and blurted out Im programming! What does it look like, Carl? Well. Then, obviously, I had to make an interpreter that would run the mess of characters on the screen. Took me all friggin night. Then I uploaded it to a Newsgroup as a joke. The rest is history.

The first Perl example, named thpbpb.pl in honor of that raspberry, has been donated to the Computer History Museum in California.

Here is that first Perl program, in its entirety:

Tbe///]st\thpbpbpb/]|||anUgt\\



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Link to news story: https://lunduke.com/2021/08/perl-creator-i-blew-a-raspberry-into-a-modem/


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