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in reply to How to learn Perl efficiently

Perl is about practical. Perl is about getting results fast. Perl is not about correct. There is no one correct way in Perl. As a result it is not necessarily the best language to learn first when you perhaps want a language that trys/forces you learn about structured programming. In some ways Perl is like presenting a 16 year old with a motorbike and encouraging them to play in the traffic. The results may well be spectacular but.....

cheers

tachyon

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Re: How to learn Perl efficiently
by theroninwins (Friar) on Aug 31, 2004 at 08:52 UTC
    Thanks for all those hints i guess I can now get on my way to learn Perl and enjoy doing so
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      That sounds like a good plan. I would also suggest you get some exposure to C.

      cheers

      tachyon

[reply]
Re^2: How to learn Perl efficiently
by DrHyde (Prior) on Sep 01, 2004 at 08:39 UTC
    The OP is a computer science student, so I'm assuming that he/she/it has a fairly good grounding in programming (possibly an unwarranted assumption based on the horror stories I hear about some CS courses, but that's another issue).

    With that and a copy of the llama book, I suggest finding a little project where you need some code, then find some perl code somewhere on tha intarweb that claims to do the job, and then learn perl by fixing that code because it's invariably going to be buggy (with insecure being a subset of 'buggy') and/or not a perfect fit for your task. I learnt perl by downloading some of Matt Wright's scripts and fixing their most obvious bugs. This might be a useful exercise, even though there is now the bugfixed NMS versions of them.

    IMO, perl code is correct if:

    • it works (and you know it works cos you've tested it)
    • it is documented
    • someone else can understand it
    which is exactly the same standard I would apply to code written in any other language.
[reply]

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