Item Description: Perl Book containing 24 lessons
Review Synopsis: A Good book for Beginners
Writing about: Third Edition , Language: English.
I was a little reluctant cause i dont like this unrealistic approach in book titles like "being a guru in 2 hours".
Surely you will probably need more than 24 hours to work through the book (without sleeping calculated) at least if you dont think you are a genius (but then you will probably learned all solely from manpages).
I noticed that around 2-3 hours are needed for a chapter depending on the complexity.
I like the book cause it has many coding examples which introduce new things btw that might be useful in that context e.g.: in reviewing the if statement rand is introduced.
The structure is good it is not too technical it reads fluently.
At the end of each chapter is a workshop section which contains some questions and tasks to control the learned.
Compared to the Update: Camel Llama Book it was more useful at the first steps for me cause it has more a "practical, howto" character. The Llama book explains it all well but i miss some useful code snipets there that go beyond the surface.
Personal Background: I am a beginner and got almost no programming experience (i did a little simple bash programming but never heard of scalars arrays e.g. before)
I must admit that i only read 6 8 chapters so far, but this already really helped me alot (i maybe adjust this with more learned)...
critic:
A drawback is that often i wanted to know more get more detailed code examples (This is the same with the Learning Perl Book from Oreilly) it is clearly a beginner book.but there is e.g. in the file lesson you learn how to open a file and how to close it and how to print a line of the file but not how to change content of a file and write it. I am someone who should must nsee some practical examples how to use a language like perl cause there are so many possibilities i dont sometimes know how to put it all together...
I strongly recommend this book for beginners and dont think the money wasted. But for real more detailed projects you will need other books, more knowledge than this book could provide ...
What i like about the book:
The Tipp: Take a Project you learn fastet if you got a goal which you work for ... (as your own webserver with cgi e.g.)
The code segments are well explained, like line 12 does this and maybe not that what you expected cause of ...
What i dont like:
I wished more details as already mentioned, many times i caught myself thinking ah interesting, i want to read more, then i turn the pages and ups, the chapter is over. This book could have been really good without these flaws ...
My Opinion: If you get this book 2nd hand | cheap and your new to Perl it is worth the try ...
btw: I like the camel Llama book too, ofc.