in reply to Re: Re: Matt's Script Archive Strikes Again!
in thread Matt's Script Archive Strikes Again!
I agree with most of what you say about Matt's scripts. I've been hacking Perl for less than two months, and they give me shudders just the same.
--
man with no legs, inc.
But your secure alternatives link game me pause. I actually bought that book (Writing CGI Applications with Perl, by Kevin Meltzer and Brent Michalski), and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
Now, I'm not trying to trash Kevin or Brent, both of whom I'm sure know far more about Perl than I do, but I thought the book was weak. Points:
- It looks like a nice thick book, but it's very padded; this verges on dishonesty, IMHO. The font is huge (12 to 14 points), there's a lot of padding (most code samples listed twice, 40 pages of appendix material that could have been 8 URLs), the margins are huge, and there's an awful lot of repetition (the 10 lines justifying -wT are repeated nearly every time it's used in a program).
- Some chapters belong better in a Perl book ("Tied Variables").
- Some inclusions/exclusions and focus choices are very odd. There's a very detailed chapter for Mason, but no mention of templates (literally - not even in the index).
- Their style is very choppy. They'll present a couple lines of code, then a paragraph talking about it, repeat. It's very difficult to get a cohesive view of the program this way - it's spoon-fed to you rather than presented whole.
- The cover's odd. What are we supposed to call it, "The Spiky Ball book?" ;)
--
man with no legs, inc.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Matt's Script Archive Strikes Again!
by KM (Priest) on Jul 26, 2001 at 22:41 UTC | |
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In Section
Meditations