"I'm never satisfied because I've been always interested in too many things and I always want to do everything at once"
About this Quote
Restlessness reads like a flaw until you notice how much of modern creativity is powered by it. Larry Wall, best known in tech circles as the creator of Perl, frames dissatisfaction not as self-pity but as an operating system: a mind wired to scan for untried tools, unfinished projects, and better ways to stitch them together. The line is almost a confession, but it doubles as a manifesto for a certain kind of maker who’s allergic to closure because closure implies choosing.
The specific intent is candid self-definition: he isn’t chasing perfection so much as breadth. “Too many things” signals curiosity as compulsion, and “everything at once” hints at the intoxicating early stage of ideas, when possibilities still outnumber constraints. Underneath is a familiar trade-off in creative work: the same attention that sparks invention can splinter into impatience, the inability to linger long enough for mastery to feel real.
In context, it resonates with the ethos of programming-language culture, where tinkering is both craft and identity. Languages like Perl were born from a desire to make messy reality tractable, to let a programmer juggle tasks without apology. Wall’s dissatisfaction becomes a kind of productive discomfort: the engine that keeps iterating, refactoring, revising. It’s also a quiet warning. Wanting everything at once is exhilarating, but it’s also the shortest path to feeling permanently behind your own appetite.
The specific intent is candid self-definition: he isn’t chasing perfection so much as breadth. “Too many things” signals curiosity as compulsion, and “everything at once” hints at the intoxicating early stage of ideas, when possibilities still outnumber constraints. Underneath is a familiar trade-off in creative work: the same attention that sparks invention can splinter into impatience, the inability to linger long enough for mastery to feel real.
In context, it resonates with the ethos of programming-language culture, where tinkering is both craft and identity. Languages like Perl were born from a desire to make messy reality tractable, to let a programmer juggle tasks without apology. Wall’s dissatisfaction becomes a kind of productive discomfort: the engine that keeps iterating, refactoring, revising. It’s also a quiet warning. Wanting everything at once is exhilarating, but it’s also the shortest path to feeling permanently behind your own appetite.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning |
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