The State of the Onion, speech by Larry Wall

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Link to a speech by Larry Wall:
http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2004/08/18/onion.html

Larry Wall is the inventor of the programming language Perl. One of the great geniusses of this time.

In this speech he gives an amazing insight in the working of his brain by associating literally everything with everything.

Whether or not his statement about being asperger is true, this humorous speech is worth reading.

What about his statement about not initiating things? Is this something you recognize?

Yes. I do not initiate phone calls, for certain. I always wait for one of the two people who do call me to do so, then I respond and even then I prefer SMS over live audio.

It is interesting to learn that Larry Wall considers himself AS, even if by self-diagnosis. I trust his judgement in terms of diagnosis of himself rather more than I would trust my self-diagnosis in terms of myself.

Also, let us not forget that Perl is very strong in terms of associative array variables; being one of the first (if not the first) language to do so.

When I have to telephone people I know initiating is not a very big problem, although not very comfortable.

When I have to telephone a company, I didn´t phone before for private reasons and I have to gather different peaces of information and have to decide something based on this information I become rather stressed. I have to write the points I want to know on paper before calling and I have to plan exactly how my reaction will be in the different scenario´s.

As a result I postpone this sort of things endlessly.

In normal conversations I have the strange habit waiting until someone else initiates the conversation or trying to react on things other people say, when the stress of saying nothing becomes to big.

Obviously, if everybody would behave this way in a conversation, it remains silent. I can´t help it. My "processor" is to slow for normal conversation.

The same problem I had on high-school in discussions. I will never be able to say something in a discussion. By the time I decided what I wanted to say, the topic was changed to something else and the thing I wanted to say was no longer appropriate. Very frustrating.