Larry Wall
Linguist-programmer who created the Perl programming language
- Age
- 72 yrs
- Birthday in 325 days
- Works listed
- 2
- Programming language, Book
- Honours
- 1
- Most recent 1998
- Profile views
- 3
- 0 followers
Larry Wall is an American programmer and linguist who created Perl in 1987, a text-processing language that became the “duct tape of the internet” in the 1990s. He also wrote the Unix patch utility and co-wrote Programming Perl.
Biography
Background
Wall grew up in Los Angeles and Bremerton, Washington, the son of a pastor. He studied natural and artificial languages at Seattle Pacific University and linguistics at Berkeley, planning to be a missionary linguist.
Perl
Working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Unisys, he wrote Perl in 1987 to make report processing easier. Its strong text handling made it the leading language for early web CGI scripts and system administration.
Philosophy
Wall designed Perl like a natural language, with the motto “There’s more than one way to do it”. He named the virtues of a programmer as laziness, impatience and hubris.
Raku
He led the long redesign that became Perl 6, renamed Raku in 2019. He received the first FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software in 1998.
Timeline
-
1954
Born in Los Angeles, California, United States
-
1985
Writes patch
-
1987
Releases Perl
-
1991
Programming Perl
-
1994
Perl 5
-
1998
FSF Award
-
2000
Perl 6 announced
-
2019
Perl 6 renamed Raku
Notable works
-
1987
Perl Programming language
-
1991
Programming Perl Book
With Tom Christiansen and Randal Schwartz.
Awards and honours
-
FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software
1998
Did you know?
-
1
Programming Perl is known as the “Camel Book”.
-
2
Perl was nearly named “Pearl”, but that name was taken.
-
3
He gives an annual “State of the Onion” talk.
Connections
Related people
Frequently asked
Who is Larry Wall?
Larry Wall is an American programmer and linguist who created Perl in 1987, a text-processing language that became the “duct tape of the internet” in the 1990s. He also wrote the Unix patch utility and co-wrote Programming Perl.
How old is Larry Wall?
Larry Wall is 72 years old, born on 27 September 1954 in Los Angeles, California, United States.
Where is Larry Wall from?
Larry Wall was born in Los Angeles, California, United States.
What is Larry Wall known for?
Larry Wall is best known for Perl (1987); the patch program; Raku; Programming Perl.
What awards has Larry Wall received?
Notable honours include FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software (1998).
References
- Larry Wall — Wikipedia. Wikipedia. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
- Larry Wall — Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
- Larry Wall — Goodreads author page. Goodreads. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
- Official website. www.wall.org. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
- Larry Wall (Q92597) — structured data. Wikidata. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
Includes material from the Wikipedia article “Larry Wall”, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. That text is available under the same licence. Learn more
External links
About this profile
- Researched by the TrackFame editorial team; reviewed by Sanjay Sokal under our editorial policy
- First published 4 November 2026
- Last updated
Cite this page
“Larry Wall.” TrackFame, last updated 5 November 2026. https://trackfame.com/person/larry-wall
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