October 19, 2005
For PERL Lovers : FROM THE ARCHIVES OF CPAN
Posted by Pankaj Madhukar under Personal but not so personalNo…It’s not that I found some perl modules at CPAN.
Quite surprisingly I found out a poem at CPAN
From: Tom Christiansen <tchrist@mox.perl.com>
Subject: In Mountain View did Larry Wall
Date: 26 Jun 1999 16:45:41 -0700
In Mountain View did Larry Wall
Sedately launch a quiet plea:
That DOS, the ancient system, shall
On boxes pleasureless to all
Run Perl though lack they C.
His acolytes he gathered round
And led where tools were never found
Save but for those made dear by Bill’s
Unkind–nay, cruel!–per-user fee
And visual glitz chock full of frills;
They barely worked, and were not free.
But now foul wretched pain was fast supplanted
With bright new Perl-wrought tools at last to cover
That savage place of which we long had ranted
Though some beneath a waning moon had chanted
To summon forth their sendmail-demon lover!
And in this place, long fleeced by Redmond’s scheming
As if the hackers’ gods were lost in dreaming
An honored program, great and open-sourced,
Which Unix hackers had long ago endorsed
Cruel schackles shattered, freeing from the jail
Where prisoners chafed beneath the Windows’ flail.
Despite these joys, we paused and looked to see
Lone Larry muttering low but plaintively
He raised his arms to calm the frenzied motion
Of heartless hackers cursing systems small
That ran these boxes pleasureless to all
For struck was Larry with another notion:
‘Twas not enough to bring Perl to this shore
His quiet voice he raised to ask for MORE!
This land was lacking still the pleasure
That comes from using simple glue
To join together native treasure,
And integrate COM objects, too.
Then came a miracle of rare device,
An Active Perl to lend its flair and spice
To friends trapped far from Paradise.
In a vision once I saw:
It was a Wisconsinian maid,
And with Perl Power Tools she played
Stringing puissant pipes together
Deftly weaving webs of power
Fingers dancing like a feather
Till in me deep delight did flower.
I built myself a tool so fair
‘Twould run on Bill’s or Steve’s device,
That she might know me if I dare.
My friends cry out: Beware! Beware!
Her singeing sighs, her stinging stare!
She knows me not, mistrusting vice.
My words of Unix bring her dread,
But I shall sooth her fears instead
And drink the milk of Paradise.
–Larry Wall in < 1992May12.190238.5667@netlabs.com>
October 19, 2005 at 9:41 pm
Google will give around 800,000 links for perl poetry. Though the lucky link is Perl monks :-). Some people write poems in the language meaning the poetries are fully executable programs ;-).
Btw are you working in something related to perl; why CPAN, i mean ?
October 20, 2005 at 10:33 am
pankaj is back!!
i thought you had gone into hibernation before even the winter started..
just tell me one thing, when will be your next post?
October 20, 2005 at 11:27 am
Isnt it written on the lines of ..
“In Xanadu did Kubla khan .. “
October 20, 2005 at 11:52 am
@pankaj: Please use Perl and not PERL. PERL is a real-time processing language and not the one which you and i are talking about
October 20, 2005 at 12:29 pm
@Parry: Thanx for the correction..it should be “Perl” only and not PERL.
And ya..i am coding in perl also here.
@Rocky :
he he..ya it seems
@Kunal
next blog.. soon..but dont ask how soon..first lemme finish reading blogs of u guyz–>