Re: Best Approach to Learn Perl for a Non Programmer

[melguin]

Although I had taken a class in Pascal, Assembly (sounds scary but we didn't do much), and C, Perl is by far the first language that I came to know well enough that I can claim as a language I can say more they "Hello, world" with.

I asked the same question to others when I was at the stage you are in, and I got the same answer I'd also recommend to you. Find something you want to do with it then, solve learning problems as you come to them.

Also, I would suggest that if you haven't already, do all of the excercises in Learning Perl, check your program with their's, implement what you learn from their's into your own code, then mess with and make it do other things it "doesn't have to."

Above all, do something fun.

melguin.

[Chrisf]

This might sound like questionable advice, so read at your own risk...

What I like to do when learning something new is start at a very advanced stage, just read through source code, the more advanced books, etc. without really worrying about catching onto any of it. So after you've done this for a week or so you really don't feel like you've learned anything at all but when you go back and pick up a beginners book, you find yourself focusing a lot better. You'll recognize things and know that there are real world applications for each of the examples and you'll remember them far better. Oh yeah, and like everyone else says do the examples, make up problems to solve on your own, and practice, practice, practice. Hanging around here doesn't hurt either :)

Hope this helps