I have heard a version of the story about PERL and from the little bit I know about Larry Wall it has the ring of truth, but I also heard that there is another backronym option: Practical Extraction and Reporting Language or as stated in the Wikipedia article, Larry Wall's version: Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister.
Here's another I know of: FRED (friendly editor) - a version of QED that ran on Honeywell mainframes in the 70's and 80's. It is somewhat reminiscent of vi (and vim) and Ex in their earlier incarnations
Aaargh FRED wasn't open source! I remember lobbying our IT department manager to purchase it. I had learned it from my university days on a Unix terminal. He eventually approved it and for a while I was in editor heaven.
I have heard a version of the story about PERL and from the little bit I know about Larry Wall it has the ring of truth, but I also heard that there is another backronym option: Practical Extraction and Reporting Language or as stated in the Wikipedia article, Larry Wall's version: Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister.
Here's another I know of: FRED (friendly editor) - a version of QED that ran on Honeywell mainframes in the 70's and 80's. It is somewhat reminiscent of vi (and vim) and Ex in their earlier incarnations