Perl 6 Essentials

[PerlBear]

Item Description: Authors: Allison Randall, Dan Sugalski & Leopold Tötsch

Review Synopsis:

Although I would tend to agree with my fellow monks in that Perl 6 is still quite a distance off and we can only speculate on it's true final form; this book's title immediately caught my attention when passing by the computer section of Perl at my local bookstore.
Here is the book's layout:

• Chapter 1 - Project Overview: "The Birth of Perl 6...."
• Chapter 2 - Project Development: "Developement of the Language and Virtual Compiler..."
• Chapter 3 - Design Philosophy: "Linguistic, Cognitive & Architectural Considerations..."
• Chapter 4 - Syntax: "Variables, Operators, Control Structures, etc. ..."
• Chapter 5 - Parrot Internals: "A look at the core of Parrot the virtual runtime machine...."
• Chapter 6 - Parrot Assembly Language: "An Introduction to Parrot...'
• Chapter 7 - Intermediate Code Compiler: "An Intro. to Parrot's Intermediate Code Compiler"

I found that this book, in my opinion, to be true to its form; very well structured and organized. It's key strength is the use of concrete examples. The author(s) present a particular topic then show it is finitely utilized in relevant yet simple code example. They were even able to explain the Parrot assembly language into terms that I was able to begin to understand. Impressive.
Again, I realize that Perl 6 is certainly only in its early formative stages, without a doubt subject to lots of change; however, I must say that I enjoyed this book. It gave me finite insight into the possibilites of Perl6!. I am indeed looking forward to the Second Edition of this book.
Enjoy the Read!