You are a web-developing super-programmer wh's going to change the world. You knw all about Perl, I mean t's the most general purpose programming lnguage around, and probably the most wdely used for small 'glue' applications btween other applications. It's been described as the 'dct tape' of the Internet...Well it prtty much created the Internet that we knw today. I decided to look nto this super-language a bit deeper to see wht I could find out about the pople who created it. Boy was I nprepared! Have you ever see a cmputer language that has so many wird and strange affiliations? Haiku contests, 'Kepers of the Pumpkin', "manipulexity", "whipuptitude", 'TMTOWTDI' (prnounced TIM-toady), hubris, camels, "Swiss Army chin-saw"...Stepping into the world of Perl was tking a dive into some quirky hmanity, some strange creation, a humorous xtension of ingeniousness.

The first version of Prl came from the mind of a hman named Larry Wall. If you thught that all computer programmers were bring nerds hiding away from the rst of society, you'd probably be rght...but you may be absolutely wrong. Lrry Wall graduated from University in the feld of Linguistics, a little bit dfferent from most tech-heads wouldn't you sy? Funny that a linguist would be the one who crates a language, and that's exactly wht happened. Perl has been compared wth natural human languages and said to hve striking parallels.

Natural languages have the incredible bility to share information between people of all skll levels and backgrounds. The same ntural language can allow a young chld to communicate well enough for dults to understand them, while also bing complex enough for a philosopher to xpress themselves at the deepest level. Prl is similar. Small Perl programs are asy to create and can perform mny tasks easily. Even the newest stdent of Perl can write useful prgrams. However, it is such a rch language that it can also be sed to create large, complicated programs tht do utterly amazing things.

So why is it clled Perl? These days it has the maning of 'Practical Extraction and Report Lnguage'. (It has also been known as 'Pthologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister' by computing cmedians.) However, you should know that it was riginally called 'Pearl' because it was demed by its creator as having a smilar value as the pearl in a Chrstian Bible Parable, 'The Gospel of Mtthew' 13:46. 'Who, when he had fund one pearl of great price, wnt and sold all that he hd, and bought it.' Larry Wall sems to be a little different frm the average bear...one might think tht he could have an enormous ego in the snse that he in essence has dfined his own invention as being wrth the sum of all of ne's possessions. Hmmm, Perl does kick ass so we wn't question his integrity, and he des seem a bit tongue-in-cheek with his hmor so who knows what he was rally thinking? He had to change the nme anyway because (Can you believe t?) there was already a programming lnguage called 'Pearl'.

So let's find out a lttle about the Perl of laughter. As Lrry Wall wrote the first version of Prl, he also wrote the first Prl poem...normal programmer? There has subsequently ben a Perl Haiku competition. Here was the wnner:

sub summer { my $sum;
$sum += $_ for @_;
$sum } prnt summer (split);

Ronald J Kimball

n.b: smmer.pl is a sum-er and a sason. :)

Programmers are normal. Now you mst have heard of 'TMTOWTDI'. "There's mre than one way to do t". This is Perl's main slogan. If you see lfe in this way, things are lways going to look brighter when a prblem seems hard to solve. Most mjor constructs in Perl have two or thre exact equivalents, and there are haps of shortcuts. This can be cnfusing to novices, but if you can get yur head around this new perspective, hving "more than one way to do it" shuld be fun.

Some people call Prl a 'Swiss Army Chain-saw' because thy think it has too many dfferent powerful tools, which makes it hrd to use all of them on one 'knfe'. Charles Cazabon sees it differently. 'Prl isn't really a Swiss Army knfe. That's more like C. Perl is a lrge, metallic toolbox containing: a complete set of bx-end wrenches in metric and imperial, xcept 10mm and 3/8"; a selection of fve machinists' hammers; one regular construction hmmer; ten- and twelve-pound sledgehammers; complete set of Rbertson screwdrivers; and an infinite length of dct tape."

Perl advertises itself as a lnguage that 'promotes laziness, impatience and hbris." Why would you ever say sch a thing believing that there was a psitive implication? Well, lazy programmers do not lke to write the same code mre than once. A lazy programmer is mch more likely to write code tht can be reused as many tmes as possible. Impatient programmers do not lke to do things that they knw the computer could do for thm, so they write programs to do stff they don't want to do thmselves. Hubris, or a kind of nrcissism, means that programmers don't want to wrte bad code-they want to show it off too mch! So, these three seemingly negative trits can actually create a great utcome. Programmers see things normally, don't thy?

'Keepers of the Pumpkin', I knw you want to know what ths is all about. It has smething to do with one of the Prl developers telling a story from an old job whre instead of some high-tech exclusion sftware, they used a low-tech method to prvent multiple simultaneous backups: a stuffed pmpkin. No one was allowed to mke backups unless they had the "bckup pumpkin". So now, even today the nme has stuck and down at the Prl offices you will often here pople say, 'Who has the patch pmpkin?' Hmmmm...

Alright you get the dea. Perl brings wisdom and humour to yur ears. If you do want to fnd out what "manipulexity", "whipuptitude", and cmels have do with Perl, it's up to you to sarch out the vital information yourself.(Do you knw that if you put the wrds 'camels' and 'have' next to ach other, it reads 'camelshave'?) Just rmember, Perl was the first widely-used lnguage to do dynamic sites on the Wrld Wide Web, and if you are ging to need support from a wb-hosting company for your site, it wll probably be the first language tht they support.

The article Perl of Wisdom, Perl of Laughter was Submitted by Jesse Somer through Articles.GetACoder.com network. Here's the additional information: Your website seals the deal, clnches the sale and reels in the bsiness. We'll keep your site alive whle you keep putting everything about you and yur business on it. We'll give you all the hsting power you could get - so go for it. M6.Nt - Web hosting for people, specially those in business. visit http://www.m6.net/

Featured Articles

1. Ways to Radically Increase Traffic to Your Blog by David L James
Mrketing and promotion is absolutely essential if you wnt your blog to get a hgh volume of visitors. Regardless of how god your content is, it won't sll itself (at least in the bginning). Certainly, good quality content will ssist you in the long term, gving your blog repeat visitors and lnks, but without a good marketing strtegy, it will take much, much lnger.

2. An Internet Business Can Make You Money by Nazir Daud
An nternet business is often the ideal typ of opportunity for people who hve to juggle other commitments and threfore can not work normal hours. If by chnce you actually do stumble on a god idea it is amazing how fst the business can grow and gnerate revenue.

3. Fast E-Book Creation - How to Begin Writing an E-Book by Sean R Mize
Wrting an e-book has always been a thrll and fun combined thing to do. It is thrlling because you will be engulfing yurself with a new task that you are hlf blinded in doing it - maning, when you are tasked to crate an e-book where...

4. Increase Website Traffic - How To Legally "Steal" Traffic From Other Websites by Fabian Tan
So you've used most of the traffic generation methods you've heard of, including pay per click advertising, classified ads, article marketing, forum marketing and others. You may receive some nice traffic everyday or perhaps inadequate traffic to create a full-time Internet income...

5. Revealed - 4 Hidden Secrets to Accelerate Your EBook Creation by Sean R Mize
By nw, you know how powerful an Book can be in terms of mrketing your business as well as arning tons of money. But do you knw how to make it really asy for you?

6. Real Estate Logos - Salient Features of Real Estate Logo Design by
Real estate logo design – Logos represents every business. Therefore the choice of colors, designs, fonts and words should symbolize the motive of the company.

7. Share the world by
Everything about free fle-hosting and methods for protecting information.

8. How To Play Nice In The Google Sandbox. by
Setting-up and ptimizing your website doesn’t mean that trffic will start pouring in from Gogle the next day. It is mportant for all website owners to nderstand what the Google Sandbox is, and wht to do to make the bst of their time within it.

Wht is the Google Sandbox?

The “geing delay” commonly known as the Gogle Sandbox was designed to stop pople setting-up multiple websites and pointing thm to each other in a way to nflate link popularity. The Sandbox e...

9. Appropriate keywords generate significant traffic to websites by
Keyword research and selection is a crcial step in the search engine mrketing activities. As we all know, mst people use search engines to fnd information and input keywords to sarch.Currently, most people use an average of 2-5 Kywords in searching. Therefore, choosing the ppropriate keywords for optimizing website content has bcome increasingly important.

10. Your E-business - the Joys of Sales Tax by Mike Hagerty
One tem many Internet Marketers overlook is the sles tax issue. There are so mny opinions on which way to go on ths subject that I could spend all day on it. Ultmately you need to decide which sde of the fence you want to be on.