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Let's stipulate that Larry Wall is a religious fanatic (though I think that's only true if you use the word "fanatic" in a highly nonstandard way). So what? What actual impact has that had on the design of Perl? What features of Perl's design are worse as a result of Larry Wall's religious beliefs or practices? I don't see any sign that any are.

(You mention exactly one thing about Perl's design, namely the "bless" keyword. That's a bit quirky, but it's not a terrible name for what it does and nothing obviously better occurs to me.)

> Going on a missionary expedition [...] sounds to me more like [...] than a sound motivation for programming language design.

In what way were Larry Wall's missionary ambitions a "motivation for programming language design" at all? I don't see any sign that they were.

(I do remember, from many years ago, something in Perl's licence or readme file along the lines of "I make Perl because I think it pleases the Author of my story. If you have a problem with that, your notion of Authorship needs some revision :-)", but I think that means not "I wrote Perl to help me convert the heathen" but "Everything I do is for the greater glory of God". So far as I can see, that doesn't imply any particular language-design choices.)

[EDITED to add: I looked it up. The above doesn't misquote too badly, but one place where it diverges from the original is that he actually wrote "nice things like this", not "Perl" specifically. I think this makes it even clearer that the Perl language design as such is not what LW is saying was religiously motivated. You can find the actual text at https://github.com/Perl/perl5 if you care.]

I listened to as much as I could bear to of that language design conversation. (The audio is incredibly bad for almost all of it, unfortunately.) I didn't notice Larry Wall's contributions being notably less insightful, more dogmatic, more ignorant, or whatever it is you're gesturing towards. The one example you give is that Larry Wall doesn't like IDEs and James Gosling does, which doesn't seem like good evidence of anything.

So, please, if you're going to make this sort of claim, make it explicit enough to engage with properly. What about Perl is the way it is becaues of Larry's "religious fanaticism"?

(As it happens I'm an atheist and don't like Perl very much. There's plenty I dislike a lot about both Christianity and Perl. It's the alleged connection you're trying to draw between them that I don't see at all.)

This bigoted, anti-religion, ad-hominem ranting would result in a stern chastisement, or even an outright ban by dang for "ideological flamewar" were it not posted by a user with 14k karma points. And it's far from the only such comment DonHopkins has made on HN (he even continues by quoting Wikipedia rants about "Christian colonialism": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26660365).

Yet HN mods have the gall to claim that "reflexive," combative commenting is not allowed, and "reflective," truth-seeking comments are what's required: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26548649

Clearly, certain users are allowed to say whatever they want on HN. If HN were honest, it would go ahead and give them orange checkmarks.

It would also not be allowed if it were against any religion other than Christianity.

> Going on a missionary expedition in Africa to invent and teach illiterate people of color a written language to read the Bible in certainly sounds to me [...] like religious and linguistic imperialism...

Honestly, this could only be said by someone who had never met anyone whose spoken language hadn't been written. I personally know people who have recently done exactly this: Developed a writing system for a tribe of people who previously had no writing system for their own language. The people themselves are amazed to see their language written down. They have generally internalized the negative attitudes of the larger culture they live in toward their own language; they'll say things like (and this is going to be offensive, but again, it's them saying it about their own language, having internalized it from the larger African language groups around them), "I thought our language was just a monkey language". Seeing it written down gives them a sense of value and pride toward their own culture they've never had before. This is exactly the opposite of "the transfer of a dominant language to other people". On the contrary, it gives people a powerful tool to fight linguistic imperialism.

That's very interesting. I thought it was odd that so many writing systems for indigenous languages[0] use invented alphabets instead of adapting Latin letters but this makes total sense when the written form is a source of pride and identity.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Aboriginal_syllabics

So, picking a few religious-themed keywords out of a hat, and using this + non programming interests as a strawman basis to attack the whole language as designed by 'religious fanaticism' ? If I have to pick the 'superstitious' side, it would be the side of this argument.

This isn't 'Temple OS'. By this line of reasoning we should all only use strongly-typed FP since it's the only 'rational enough' language family.

I think this is a silly line of inquiry at best, but if one were to attempt to take it seriously, surely “there is precisely one way to do it” is an approach that would better fit the “imperialist” frame than Perl’s actual approach.

Which Imperialistic Programming Language dictates that "there is precisely one way to do it"?

Not Python -- it has Zen-like practical suggestions about what matters, instead of ideological doctrine about how to do it:

https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/

>There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.

>Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.

Does The Zen of Python really sound "imperialistic" to you?

    The Zen of Python

    Beautiful is better than ugly.
    Explicit is better than implicit.
    Simple is better than complex.
    Complex is better than complicated.
    Flat is better than nested.
    Sparse is better than dense.
    Readability counts.
    Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
    Although practicality beats purity.
    Errors should never pass silently.
    Unless explicitly silenced.
    In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
    There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
    Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
    Now is better than never.
    Although never is often better than *right* now.
    If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
    If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
    Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!

Not exactly but I think the idea that Perl (or for that matter Christianity) is imperialistic is itself absurd, so that doesn’t seem like an answer.

Anyway, the closest I’ve experienced is Go, to answer your question.

Most historians and victims of its missionaries would beg to differ that Christianity isn't imperialistic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_colonialism

>Christianity and colonialism

>Christianity and colonialism are often closely associated with each other because Protestantism and Catholicism participated as the state religions of the European colonial powers and in many ways they acted as the "religious arms" of those powers. According to Edward Andrews, Christian missionaries were initially portrayed as "visible saints, exemplars of ideal piety in a sea of persistent savagery". However, by the time the colonial era drew to a close in the last half of the twentieth century, missionaries became viewed as "ideological shock troops for colonial invasion whose zealotry blinded them", colonialism's "agent, scribe and moral alibi."

>In some areas, almost all of the colony's population were removed from their traditional belief systems and were turned into the Christian faith, which the colonizers used as a reason to destroy other faiths, enslave the natives, and exploit the lands and seas.

>"Colonialism is a form of imperialism based on a divine mandate and designed to bring liberation – spiritual, cultural, economic and political – by sharing the blessings of the Christ-inspired civilization of the West with a people suffering under satanic oppression, ignorance and disease, effected by a combination of political, economic and religious forces that cooperate under a regime seeking the benefit of both ruler and ruled." -Jan H. Boer of the Sudan United Mission

I think one could easily make similar arguments about, say, the Internet. But let’s leave it aside. Let me ask you something: even granting it’s true, what does anything here have to do with Perl, beyond guilt by association?

I think it is a stretch to argue that every missionary is motivated by 'Imperialism'. Certainly some may have been in the past, but if one sincerely accepts the tenants of a religion then it isn't surprising one has enthusiasm to spread it. I've seen plenty of evangelists for every ideology under the sun. People who think they are right will go to great lengths to spread their ideas.

Also, the end of slavery was pushed by conscientious Christian evangelists like John Newton and William Wilberforce in the UK. It is easy to argue against slavery in Christianity owing to the Imago Dei doctrine. I suspect it is less easy to argue against slavery in other religions and cultures; many of which still practice forms of it today.

Spreading your religion while separating your culture is difficult. The same way it is difficult for a migrant to fully adapt the customs of any host culture. I think the relationships between these ideas are more complex than the evil catch-all of 'Imperialism!'.

I think it might be easier to see the point you are making if we substituted some other ideas. For instance, how many of us are ready to argue that freedom and democracy are evil or imperialist ideas? Yet they served as a rationale for the invasion of Iraq.

There's more than one way to argue it.

> There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.

This always felt like an excessive over-reaction to Perl's "there's more than one way to do it" motto and never struck me as desirable or true.

In the earlier days of Python I remember reading StackOverflow questions which attracted differing solutions and Python advocates (who were a bit abrasive at the time) would reconcile this with the above by saying some answers weren't sufficiently "pythonic". It all seemed rather strange.

I think this is pretty common though. Most language communities converge on some standard way of doing things. I always try to go along with the philosophy of the language I’m working in, even if I wouldn’t necessarily choose that myself from a blank slate.

I don't think it's a stretch to argue that Christianity is imperialistic, and by extension Christian missionaries are de facto agents of imperialism. However, I think it's a stretch to argue that Perl is imperialistic. :)

It's fascinating to learn that Larry Wall might have become a missionary had his life gone a different direction, but I don't think one can make a compelling case that Wall's religiosity had a major effect on Perl's language design. Don Knuth is a devout Lutheran who played church organ, taught Sunday school, and wrote a book about the Bible -- but it just doesn't seem likely we should be concerned that typesetting our work with TeX subtly infuses it with Christian apologia.

Official Religion of the Roman Empire; retains some imperialist overtones. Yes. And so what.