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Re: The history of Perl Poetry

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From:
merlyn
Date:
April 21, 2005 09:53
Subject:
Re: The history of Perl Poetry
Message ID:
86y8bct8nr.fsf@blue.stonehenge.com
>>>>> "Andrew" == Andrew Savige <ajsavige@yahoo.com.au> writes:

Andrew> http://history.perl.org/PerlTimeline.html describes Sharon Hopkins as
Andrew> "the reigning Perl Poetry Pumpqueen" after the publication of her 1992
Andrew> definitive work "Camels and Needles: Computer Poetry meets the Perl
Andrew> Programming Language". This is an interesting paper and I'm curious
Andrew> to know how she came to write it. Does anyone know what provoked her
Andrew> into writing this paper? How/when did she meet Larry? Did she ever
Andrew> work with him?

She worked with him (next cubicle over, I believe) when he was at JPL
(lwall@jpl-devvax.jpl.gov).

Andrew>  Apart from her wonderful poetry, what other stuff has
Andrew> she done with Perl? Is she still writing Perl and poetry today?

Andrew> Was the writing of poetry ever a design consideration in any version
Andrew> of Perl?

Well, it's been said that barewords in Perl3 were the result of wanting
a simple way to write:

        @days = (mon,tue,wed,thu,fri);

although that fails for:

        @months = (jan,feb,mar,apr,may,jun,jul,aug,sep,oct,nov,dec);

(Do you know why? :-)

But also barewords were added so that Sharon could write better poetry.
Hence, it is also called "poetry mode" in some of my earlier writings.

-- 
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