I've never seen that one, but in my experience the Foo in 21 Days books are not fit to keep around. Much wrongness explainable only by the author having just 21 days experience in the subject.

So that would be a "get your feet wet but don't take it as gospel?" or avoid it outright.....

Use as kindling, IMO. The worst computer-related book I have ever had the misfortune to encounter was from the "21 Days" series. It wasn't the Perl in 21 Days book specifically, but it was so horrifically terrible that I feel comfortable condemning that one too without looking at it. We're not just talking here about a book that excels in mediocrity, like the For Dummies books that present things in suboptimal ways, contain mistakes, and leave out important information. The "21 Days" book that I read was MUCH worse than that. It was the "warn others to stay away" kind of bad. Avoid, avoid, avoid.

---

Sanity? Oh, yeah, I've got all kinds of sanity. In fact, I've developed whole new kinds of sanity. Why, I've got so much sanity it's driving me crazy.

Ahhhhh, the Black Book.

That's how I started my Perl journery. As a graphic designer, 5 years ago I expressed to an IT friend that I wanted to learn CGI, not knowing what in the heck I was talking about. He handed me the Black Book and told me I needed to learn Perl. So, I sat down at the computer one Saturday afternoon and started writing my first program.

I did okay for a couple of years, cranking out what I now know to be really bad--but working--code. Then I stumbled into the the Monastery. And boy, did I ever get a wake up call! Strict, placeholders, CPAN, OO, etc.

Now I have a book shelf with about 8 O'Reilly books and a few XP as a monk. So, while it's not a great book, it got me started and was an okay reference for the first couple of years.

I say keep the books - not everyone has money for new, better books. If you think the books aren't first-notch, just paste a blurb on the inside cover telling people where to go to learn more (perlfunc, perlvar, and here).

I did give the 21 days a scan and it's obviously dated and at best a "get your feet wet" type of book.

She has final say over it. If she won't get rid of it, I will put in a disclaimer. Good idea! Thanks!

There was an issue about avoidable books some time ago.

Reviewing bad books..

Have your boss get a trial safari.oreilly.com account as I see they now do enterprise. (though I cannot find the pricing, I know you were talking about freebies sorry, but a tech industry should not rely on stale print libraries unless the internal code is going to stay locked in versions akin to the stale print reference.)

If you have coders, have a code friendly library at a cost that meets the volume of usage.

That said I never throw out books, I like reference material. Someday I may read them and someday I may learn to code well.

Sorry I have to plug safari, I found it to be a truly great service and is changing my way of approaching tech books. But that said the Black Book is a great reference for looking up things quickly especially when search terms are just confusing you in google. Though I can not remember the edition we had at the last place I worked. Do they even still sell those.... something to look for.

Sorry I have to plug safari, I found it to be a truly great service and is changing my way of approaching tech books.

I have it; I found it very useful. The great thing is that you can check out a book without buying it. This avoids the "shelf-creep" that happens when you wind up getting marginally useful books that you hate to throw out, but never really use. They just take up space. With Safari you can read the entire book if you want, and decide whether it's worth adding to your paper library. It has already saved me a pile of money on books, as well as allowed me to check out subjects that I would otherwise have skipped because of the price of buying a whole book on the subject.

I like having a copy of that around as a quick reference when I'm having a brain fart about a particular function, but it's not something I'd necessarily give someone to learn Perl. And I'd only keep it if it's the large fat copy, and not it's slimmed down cousin.

Of course it's a few years old, so that may factor in to your decision as well.

I like having a copy of that around as a quick reference when I'm having a brain fart about a particular function

If I was having a brain fart about a particular function, (e.g.: the order of the values returned by localtime) then I'd use perldoc with the -f (for function) option:

perldoc -f localtime

Not only would this be quicker than grabbing a book and locating the correct page, I'd be able to cut-and-paste the example code as well.

I got started on the NT Perl in 21 days (in 1996) for only one reason; it was the only thing that showed how to programmatically edit NT Accounts (except for learning MS-C++).

There are better books out there, I trashed it a long time ago, and if you notice your co-worker trashed his... That should tell you something about it!

Perl Black Book? Getting a little dated now, but it is basically accurate, being little more than a rewrite of the basic Perl documentation. As someone else said, always useful during brain farts and usually eaasier to find things in than in the docs.

Perl 5 Interactive Course? Not seen it, but given that it is by Jon Orwant it may well be quite okay! I am not sure if I have read anything he wrote himself, but he did a great job as editor of "The Perl Journal".

jdtoronto

Perl Black Book 2nd Edition

The Perl Black Book is apparently much better than the Java one... I'll add to its list of upvotes, as it is my #1 Perl reference book. O'Reillys are definitely the way to go for learning the material, but, when my brain is out to lunch and I just need a quick reminder, I can find it a lot faster in Perl Black Book than by locating the right animal and looking there.

Okey dokey - just goes to show you can't judge a book by looking at the cover - or in this case 'series' I guess.

Cheers
--
charlieharvey.org.uk

It's ok as a second choice, and it's a whole lot more difficult to live with, but it's staple, and it makes sense - which is good for newbies.
Can't speak for the others, have never seen them.