Larry Wall and his wife are some of the nicest people I ever had the pleasure of meeting. I posted this story on HN before several years ago (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9890504" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9890504</a>), but I think it's worth reposting here:<p>I have a very charming Larry Wall story. He came to give a seminar to the research center where I was working, and gave a fantastic talk on Perl 6.
Late in the evening, I ran into him and his wife on the bus when getting home from work - and started talking to them. Apparently, nobody from the department had arranged to take them out for dinner, so we ended up going out for dinner together, where we had a fantastic discussion covering religion, tolerance, and lots of other topics. I am a staunch materialist and atheist, while both the Walls are serious committed Christians, but we had a really pleasant discussion on religion and the nature of evidence.<p>I ended up giving his wife a copy of Hume's Dialogue on Natural Religion, and they were kind enough to sign a copy of the Camel book for a friend who is a huge Perl fan.<p>A lot of people know Larry by reputation - but his wife Gloria is just as smart and kind. It was a bit of a strange evening, but it was a rare privilege to meet two such interesting people.<p>I cannot emphasize enough how unassuming, kind and decent the Walls are. If you are also interested in very intelligent writing about religion, their son, Aaron, has a very neat blog: <a href="http://www.wall.org/~aron/blog/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wall.org/~aron/blog/</a>.