It is not the best possible book, and it has some serious problems. But it is valuable, and I think it will do a lot more good than harm. I have recommended Perl and CGI for the World-Wide Web to people in the past, and I am looking forward to the second edition.

I disagree slightly. You may be right about the benefits regarding use strict, my and -w in Castro's examples, however, you must admit that those are good habits to get into. Indeed, I've found that by starting with good habits, I've avoided some of the problems we see posted so often. Also, other titles have shown that it is possible to start with good basics: security, CPAN, good program design, and so forth. While that title is perhaps not appropriate for a first introduction to programming, it can help experienced programmers learn better habits from the start. As I'm sure you're aware, once we get an idea into our heads, it's difficult to shake it.

I agree that Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web can be a good place to start from some people; I fear, though, that some will presume that they have enough knowledge when finishing it to create and deploy production scripts. Given the relative lack of security information in the first edition, that would be very dangerous. The book does have some value, however, I would hope that people move from there to one providing more suitable education for production CGI scripts.

As an aside, the second edition appears to be available (check the above link). Since davorg mentions that some of the more egregious problems have been dealt with, the new edition may be more successful than the first.

--f