Stephen Fry doesn't have the brain power for Perl

English comedian, writer, actor, humourist, novelist, columnist, filmmaker and television personality Stephen Fry, wrote in his "Dork Talk" column last week that his father (a physicist) is fluent in Perl, but that he doesn't feel he has the brain-power or the concentration for it himself.

Insert "perhaps [language you hate] would suit him instead" joke here.

Nobody says perl looks like line-noise any more
kids today don't know what line-noise IS ...

Comment on Stephen Fry doesn't have the brain power for Perl

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Stephen Fry doesn't have the brain power for Perl by -arc- (Monk) on Jan 29, 2008 at 17:54 UTC
Nope. Don't believe him. The man is an intellectual giant, and I'm sure that if there was a PG Wodehouse version of LOLCode, possibly named JeevesScript, then Stephen would concoct something stunningly elegant and undoubtably witty.	[reply]
Re: Stephen Fry doesn't have the brain power for Perl by Joost (Canon) on Jan 29, 2008 at 20:37 UTC
The man may not be bothered to learn perl ('cause I'm sure he could manage it if he wanted to) but his comment on social networking sites vis-à-vis AOL and other old, closed and guarded on-line systems is spot on, in my opinion: (...) what an irony! For what is this much-trumpeted social networking but an escape back into that world of the closed online service of 15 or 20 years ago? Is it part of some deep human instinct that we take an organism as open and wild and free as the internet, and wish then to divide it into citadels, into closed-border republics and independent city states? The systole and diastole of history has us opening and closing like a flower: escaping our fortresses and enclosures into the open fields, and then building hedges, villages and cities in which to imprison ourselves again before repeating the process once more. The internet seems to be following this pattern. "What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"	[reply]
Re: Stephen Fry doesn't have the brain power for Perl by runrig (Abbot) on Jan 29, 2008 at 20:01 UTC
Perhaps Lingua::Romana::Perligata. Thanks for the heads up though. I had no idea that "Jeeves" was writing a Tech Column, nor (from a link on his first column) that he has a blog (which the column sprang from).	[reply]