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in reply to Re: The Black Art of Perl Programming?
in thread The Black Art of Perl Programming?
Maybe I'm just boring, and using Perl for data manipulation and file management is boring, too, but it gets the job done quickly, easily and efficiently.
Yes, file management is boring. Sometimes data manipulation can be boring, too. Maybe I am a fan of the wrong language? But there's more to Perl than those 2 things.
It would be hard to find books on CGI if they didn't have "CGI" in the title.
You are missing my point. Why just mention CGI? How about having a book that deals with Perl CGI scripts that are geared toward e-commerce situations? Think about it: the author can discuss security with Perl (e.g., taint mode and different modules, etc) and then move on to other issues in e-commerce. But if I had a choice, I wouldn't mention CGI at all. I would discuss mod_perl, Apache, and maybe something else.
Reading my posts, I get the impression that I am coming across as somewhat of a troll. I don't want to give that impression. I started this thread because it just seems to me that the Perl books out there are so bland. I care about Perl's image. |
Re: The Black Art of Perl Programming?
by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Nov 19, 2002 at 17:06 UTC
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Tell me, what's so specific about e-commerce with Perl? I would
think that if e-commerce is a term that actually carries a meaning
more than just being a buzz-word, it's problems and solutions
are language independent. I'd treat a book with the title
"E-commerce with Perl" the same a book with the title
"Cross country driving with a Crysler".
Security isn't a topic that's e-commerce specific - and the fact
that an e-commerce site needs to address security isn't something
that's only important for e-commerce sites using Perl.
If you think that books about CGI shouldn't mention CGI in the
title, than perhaps books about gaming shouldn't mention games,
and books about e-commerce shouldn't mention e-commerce. Hey, that's
it! Perhaps the book "CGI Programming with Perl" is actually about
e-commerce, but they didn't want to mention e-commerce because
someone convinced them that that wasn't cool.
Abigail | [reply] |
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Tell me, what's so specific about e-commerce with Perl?
It's a field in which people are widely using Perl. Why not have a book on it? For just a second, let us Perl programmers think like business men.
it's problems and solutions are language independent.
Perl has many features that solve common problems in e-commerce, as do other languages. But I prefer Perl, so why not hype it?
Security isn't a topic that's e-commerce specific - and the fact that an e-commerce site needs to address security isn't something that's only important for e-commerce sites using Perl.
If I ran a major online business that uses Apache and mod_perl, I would certainly want to know what Perl can do for me security wise. I would be interested in other things as well (like the reliability and speed of Perl), but security would be a concern. Just look at all the bugs that people have recently found in PHP.
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For just a second, let us Perl programmers think like business men.
No thanks. I mean, you can do that
if you want, but I'm not.
Maybe
the real issue you're running into is Perl culture.
As a rule, Perl culture values two things:
work, and play -- i.e., getting stuff done, and
having fun. Things that are at odds with both
of those two values (i.e., activities that neither
get anything useful done nor are fun) are *widely*
valued in the business community (Yay, more
meetings!), but Perl culture tends to reject
such thinking. A book devoted to e-commerce
with Perl wouldn't sell, because Perl programmers
wouldn't consider it any more useful (for getting
things done, such as e-commerce work) than any
*other* mod_perl book (no, the problem domain for
ecommerce is *not* specially atypical), and a book
on ecommerce frankly sounds like about as much fun as
a root canal. Neither particularly useful nor
much fun means most Perl programmers won't buy it.
Perl programmers are the people who buy the most
Perl books, so if they're not going to buy it,
it's gonna flop, unless it's part of an extant
highly-successful series (e.g., Perl for Dummies
probably sells pretty well to people with no
prior Perl experience because it's riding on the
success of prior books starting with DOS for Dummies).
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Re: Re: Re: The Black Art of Perl Programming?
by amarceluk (Beadle) on Nov 19, 2002 at 20:21 UTC
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Yes, file management is boring. Sometimes data manipulation can be boring, too. Maybe I am a fan of the wrong language? But there's more to Perl than those 2 things.
There are, and I wouldn't call myself a representative of People Who Use Perl. Clearly there's more to it than my (boring) job requires. But I suspect the core Perl users are people with, if not boring, at least un-sexy jobs; they use Perl because it gets those jobs done. An awful lot of programming is data and file management. Cool things can be done with Perl, but, alas, many people don't have cool jobs.
You are missing my point. Why just mention CGI? How about having a book that deals with Perl CGI scripts that are geared toward e-commerce situations? Think about it: the author can discuss security with Perl (e.g., taint mode and different modules, etc) and then move on to other issues in e-commerce. But if I had a choice, I wouldn't mention CGI at all. I would discuss mod_perl, Apache, and maybe something else.
Yes, the more descriptive a book's title is, the better; but on the other hand, if it's too long it just gets ridiculous. You also seem to want very specific books to exist, rather than more all-encompassing books that cover the fundamentals; I guess "Perl for e-Commerce" would be useful on some level, but then, a good basic book about CGI programming could teach you what you need to know to do e-commerce yourself, and you wouldn't have shelled out another thirty-five dollars on another book.
Reading my posts, I get the impression that I am coming across as somewhat of a troll. I don't want to give that impression. I started this thread because it just seems to me that the Perl books out there are so bland. I care about Perl's image.
With all due respect, you might be perceived as less trollish if you didn't post anonymously.
__________
"Abby-somebody. Abby-normal."
—Young Frankenstein | [reply] |
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You also seem to want very specific books to exist, rather than more all-encompassing books that cover the fundamentals
Yes, it seems that Perl books cover a lot fundamentals, which is a good thing, but I would also like to see books aimed at more specific areas. Perl works extremely well with databases, but how many books on Perl and databases are out there? Probably less than 10 (but most of the time you will only find 1 or 2 at a bookstore). On the other hand, a simple search on Amazon shows that there are close 80 books dealing with Java and databases alone. Yes, 80
Quite frankly, I am surprised by these numbers, which give me the feeling that it is difficult to get a Perl book published right now (okay, at least, harder than trying to get a Java book to print). What are the implications of these numbers? They are not good for Perl. I wish I had a solution. I guess I would like to walk into one of these bookstores and see bookshelves stockpiled with Perl books on all sorts of subjects and the magazine stand filled with TPJ, but that ain't happening any time soon.
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