(Sorry, just had to do that ;-)

You have the right method -- study the works of others -- and the desire. Have patience. It may seem like you're getting nowhere, but keep at it. As the I Ching admonishes, "perseverance furthers".

Consider some alternate resources. For example, you may have picked books that aren't appropriate for your stage of growth. Some other possibilities to consider:

• "How to solve it" by Georg Polya. A true classic: one of the best all-around books on problem solving.
• "The Perl Cookbook" by Christiansen and Torkington. Instead of a reference, consider just reading it, or studying one or two techniques a day.
• My personal favorite, Effective Perl Programming by Hall and Schwartz, is a great way to rise to "the next level" in Perl. It's the same "item-at-a-time" format as Pragmatic Programmer.

I want to follow-up on the point to read from a variety of different sources. This has been working for me, at least. In the last 4 months I have purchased:
Learn Perl in 21 Days
Teach Yourself CGI
Programming the Perl DBI
Network Programming Perl
Object-Oriented Perl
The Perl CD Bookshelf (only $60!) which includes:


Learning Perl
Programming Perl
Perl Cookbook
Perl in a Nutshell
Learning Perl on Win32 Systems
Advanced Perl Programming


And of course there is all the great documentation and tutorial here on PM and elsewhere online. I'm not recommending these particular books to you, I'm just saying having a wide and diverse library has done me well. Have I read all of them through? No. Do I understand all that I read? No. But relying on the work of more than one or two has helped me tremendously in piecing it all together. Many of the books cross paths and seeing the same concept described a little differently produces those magic "Oh I see!" moments quite well.

$PM = "Perl Monk's";
$MCF = "Most Clueless Friar Abbot";
$nysus = $PM . $MCF;

I agree wholeheartedly... Where I work we set up a 1.5 hour meeting every week to start learning perl using the Learning Perl book. Some of us are complete newbies, others are a bit more adept. I have to admit though, it is pretty hard to learn the concepts without someplace to apply what you are learning. We are actively looking for good beginner projects to help jumpstart the learning curve, and have a few good ideas currently on the table. The most important thing I'd like to get across though is this: I am a VERY lucky bastard... My boss did not have to do this for us, but he has taken the time to create lessons based on each chapter, and has taught them to us. I would encourage other perl 'newbies|monks' (and everything in between) to try and do this for your own co-workers. It has made a huge difference in my life.

Spartan 'perl newbie'

Very funny Scotty... Now PLEASE beam down my PANTS!

The main characteristic in the best programmers I know is not a lot knowledge about theory and similar things, but the ability to analize the problem. They are "calm". They analyze every single aspect of the problem: the coding phase is seen as a less important aspect of programming.

Another aspect of their demeanor is the ability to teach themselves.

My advise is: get a problem you like or you need to solve and try to solve it. Simply. At the beginning, you'll be faced with a lot of problems that will lead you to a lot of aspects of programming and of the programming language you chose. As long as you keep solving new problems, you'll learn new things and you will return on issues you've already learnt, often seeing them from different points of view.

Another advice, if you can, is to study with someone else: talking with someone about a problem is a very good way to comprehend better what are you dwelling with.

First off, no.. it's not just you. :)

I think the difficult part, is wanting to learn everything at once. This can include:

• Good programming practices
• Programming Theory
• OOP
• Languages (in general)
• etc.

I have been programming for a good 4 years now - i am only on chapter 4! :D

Jeff

R-R-R--R-R-R--R-R-R--R-R-R--R-R-R--
L-L--L-L--L-L--L-L--L-L--L-L--L-L--

The nice thing about software is that, unlike traditional hardware, you can correct a mistake in seconds. (The same goes for interpreted versus compiled languages.)

When you're facing a problem, break it into tasks. Tackle the most important one first. Then do the second. As you're putting them together, look for how you can improve things. Get rid of duplicate code. Move things into functions. Share what you can. Slough off the rough edges that stick out.

Cultivate those habits, get some practical experience of how you can improve things, and continue to read up on your theory. That's a great way to improve.

Also, I've rarely had to come up with algorithms on my own, since there are such nice algorithm books out there.

stephen

kevin, were u referring to bentley's programming pearls or the o'reilly's perl book(programming perl)?

It's the Bentley book.

I used the O'Reilly book to learn Perl though.

--
Kevin O'Rourke

If you can't stare at a screen for 8 hours and have fun, you're in the wrong business.

Not only do I spend >8 hours a day staring at a screen at work I then go home and do it for fun.

Next challenge (after becoming a better programmer): get a life! ;-)

--
Kevin O'Rourke

Whew! Tell me about it! I do the same thing! I've been doing that very thing for ohhh, 6 years? I work for about 9 hours and then go home and mess about for another 4 to 5 hours! I'm such a nerd! Idn't it great!?

----------
- Jim

While the basic concepts of programming are something you should understand, there is a lot that is just experience. There is a lot of good documentation but I'd also recommend going to the book store and skimming the Tables of Contents of as many seemingly relevant books as you can find (after reading the ones people recommend here, they seem just what you need really).

If you try to solve real problems and learn a bit at a time, you can teach yourself. Even something simple like trying to do a simple thing in a program of maybe 5-10 lines and trying a few ways to do it. When you wonder why something doesn't work, try and find out by experimenting and by looking for where relevant info may be. The best weapon I could recommend is reading voraciously until you find something that speaks to you. That's when you start having fun.

By the way you will find there is an idiom that fits perl thinking just the way there are ones for electronics engineering. The author of Perl recommends laziness as a programmer's friend, so I wouldn't worry about agility. Another great motto of perlfolk is TMTOWTDI (There's More Than One Way To Do It) which you may have heard. Much of learning is looking at a problem from a few perspectives to get a handle on it. Much of experience is making a heck of a lot of mistakes (I know). Peace!

If your education has been in electrical engineering, you'll need to de-program yourself first. Software is about arrows that point from one box to the next.

Your view of programming looks awfully like flow charts. That is not so far away from electrical engineering. Probably you need to de-program yourself too. :)

-- stefp