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Re: What's missing in Perl books?

by perrin (Chancellor)
on Nov 16, 2005 at 04:01 UTC ( [id://508890]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to What's missing in Perl books?

The book that I most often wish existed, because co-workers often ask me for it, is a good introduction to object-oriented design. I don't mean the details of how Perl OO works, but rather how to analyze a problem and produce an OO design that solves it. Most of the existing books are either pretty old or full of C++ and Java code, which makes them not very helpful to less experienced coders who mainly know Perl.

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Re^2: What's missing in Perl books?
by brian_d_foy (Abbot) on Nov 16, 2005 at 05:33 UTC

    The information is out there, and at some point a programmer who wants to get better has to learn to read some other languages (without being able to write them, neccessarily). I've looked at quite a bit of the OOD stuff you can buy in bookstores. I'm not so sure a book with Perl examples would help much.

    For that I might recommend learning another language, perhaps Smalltalk or Ruby.

    --
    brian d foy <brian@stonehenge.com>
    Subscribe to The Perl Review
Re: What's missing in Perl books?
by jonadab (Parson) on Nov 16, 2005 at 14:36 UTC
    The book that I most often wish existed, because co-workers often ask me for it, is a good introduction to object-oriented design.

    If you don't care what programming language it uses, have a serious look at the Inform Designer's Manual, by Graham Nelson. Skip the first chapters about the language syntax and go straight to the section on the object model. (Yes, you can easily follow the section on the object model without having read the earlier chapters on syntax; trust me on this.) This is without qualification the *best* computer-technical book I have ever seen, and it is an *excellent* introduction to object-oriented programming.

    It's not, of course, the only OOP book you will ever need. After you finish it you will need books that get down to nuts and bolts in the language you're going to be using (assuming that isn't Inform). This is presumably where the books with details of how Perl OO works would come in. Nevertheless, as an introduction to OOP in general, the Designer's Manual is fantastic.

    Incidentally, the text of the book is freely available on the author's website, so if you want to preview it before purchasing a copy of the print edition, you can. The section on the object model starts here, although the real meat is in chapter 2, which really can just about stand on its own.


    "In adjectives, with the addition of inflectional endings, a changeable long vowel (Qamets or Tsere) in an open, propretonic syllable will reduce to Vocal Shewa. This type of change occurs when the open, pretonic syllable of the masculine singular adjective becomes propretonic with the addition of inflectional endings."  — Pratico & Van Pelt, BBHG, p68

      My wife bought The Inform Designer's Manual. It's the only technical book she's ever bought, and even though she's not a techy she really like interactive fiction.

      I read through most of it and even created some worlds. It certainly affected how I think about object-oriented programming since you specify what objects can and can't do, then the interpreter let's them loose on each other.

      --
      brian d foy <brian@stonehenge.com>
      Subscribe to The Perl Review

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