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nathell • today at 11:30 AM • 6 replies • view on HN

How Perl was created:

‘Larry, throw the cat at the keyboard!’

MEEEOW!

‘What did it type?’

‘&}Ak'>v=4%Qe}9;’

‘OK, so let’s make this a syntax for hello world.’


Replies

bjoli • today at 1:00 PM

There was a hilarious video in The early days of YouTube when someone tried to write Perl using vistas voice recognition.

I haven't seen it in many many years, but at the time it struck my giggle button every time.

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marcosdumay • today at 4:01 PM

There's always this amazing paper:

https://www.mcmillen.dev/sigbovik/2019.pdf

shawabawa3 • today at 3:39 PM

I was very disappoint to learn that '&}Ak'>v=4%Qe}9;' is not actually hello world in perl :(

here's an actual one: print'(%,,/@(/),$!'^'`@@@@`_@[@@+'

another one

    $/=~s##'&}(/%]?`~=.&~(@^,_!$/"'^'+.{|}!_{.|=.^_/,@;'^'}!:=,^(~<-|$'#ee
shevy-java • today at 3:13 PM

I also often blame it on my cat, but unfortunately, the truth is simpler ... Larry was inspired by awk. So this is why perl is snoopy swearing.

nullsanity • today at 12:24 PM

I did genuinely try to run this since, well, it could be true, I don't know Perl.

Bareword found where operator expected (Missing operator before "Ak"?) at -e line 1, near "&}Ak" Bad name after Ak' at -e line 1.

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