Re: Learning Exercises

[tphyahoo]

By all means tell him to become a monk.

I consider the perl community such an important aspect of working with perl, that I would advise him a 50/50 split between reading the perl books and learning the perl community, including perlmonks and cpan. Of course there's a symbiosis here, since when the books aren't clear you can ask on cb or sopw -- something that, if he's not used to the perl community, he may not realize how incredibly useful this is, or how fast he will get answers.

Tell him to lurk on newest nodes, answer what he can, and learn from the answers of others.

Also, from my own experience of learning perl, mastering regular expressions was key. If he doesn't know pcre regexes, have the newbie manipulate some data with regex coach (free) and/or editpad pro (not free), work up from there to perl one line data munging. That should also give him the tools to actually help those greener than him on newest nodes.

This was my learning trajectory at any rate.

From there on what he learns depends on what you want him to do for you.