Re: Offering a helping hand

[Masem]

There's about as many ways to do this as there are people that read your question.

My first approach would be to see what the young programmer has written already in VB, and find a task that is suitable for a possible conversion to perl. This means to try to avoid using anything GUI (which is really hard to do in VB, but possible). This way, your student already knows what the logic of the code should be and now should be understanding the perl engine instead.

Another possible first task, if this doesn't pan out, would be to determin a much smaller version of code that is typical of the work this person might do in the future. For example, if he's bound to be a CGI/DB programmer, it might be a good idea to aid him in getting a very simple web-based address book up and running. If he'll be doing XML, have him work on simple client-server calls. Sure, the tasks are pointless to some extent, but the idea it to immerse the person in the language rather than take a step-by-step approach. Mind you, you should help the person break down on subtasks within the mini-project so that he doesn't need to focus on too many perl aspects at the same time.

Of course, all this should be done after giving him sufficient time to read Camel and other books and practice on the topics in there. Ideally, when he is learning, you can point him to certain areas to look at closely, and he'll occasionally ask you questions or clarifications; this is counter to you standing over his shoulder at all times, as well as having him constantly at your desk asking questions and not learning on his own. Make sure to point him to other useful sources of perl info, including perl.com, newsgroups, PM (possibly), and other sources.

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Dr. Michael K. Neylon - [e-mail] || "You've left the lens cap of your mind on again, Pinky" - The Brain