in reply to Re: Camel vs Llama for a newbie
in thread Camel vs Llama for a newbie

I, personally, would stick with the books from O'Reilly.

Well, if you did that, you'd miss out on Object Oriented Perl, Effective Perl Programming and Perl Debugged which are three of the best Perl books available.

And more non-ORA authors than ORA authors hang out here :)

--
<http://www.dave.org.uk>

Perl Training in the UK <http://www.iterative-software.com>

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Re: Re: Re: Camel vs Llama for a newbie
by runrig (Abbot) on Sep 07, 2001 at 19:55 UTC
    And don't forget Data Munging with Perl ;-)

    Note to dragonchild: And Effective Perl Programming is by merlyn but is not an ORA book.

Re: Re: Re: Camel vs Llama for a newbie
by bjohnso (Sexton) on Sep 07, 2001 at 22:50 UTC
    I agree that O'Reilly is the best way to go as well. The other cool thing you could do is check out Safari. For $10 bucks a month you can subscribe to 5 online O'Reilly books.

    Even though I own both the Camel and the Llama I find myself using Safari more just because I can search. heh

    check it out at: http://safari.oreilly.com/

    Cheers!
      Thats about $60 for 6 months, and $120 for one year. So you have spent $120 in one year and the only thing left, is the information your brain can remember.
      I believe Safari is the wrong thing for a beginner. $10/month for five books seems to be cheap, but in the long run you better buy the books you will need during the next years.
      So if you don't care to read your books on the screen, $63.96 for The Perl CD Bookshelf: Version 2.0 will be a much wiser investment.
      That does not mean Safari is useless and a too expensive service. Actually Safari is a great service for Programmers. Some books you read just once, and its not necessary to buy them. If your a lucky you can get these books from your local library; if not Safari will be the service you need.

      Hanamaki
Re: Re: Re: Camel vs Llama for a newbie
by dragonchild (Archbishop) on Sep 07, 2001 at 19:56 UTC
    I've read Object Oriented Perl, and Data Munging with Perl, and a number of non-ORA other books. Personally, while I'm sure that all these authors are an excellent programmers, their books tended to be pedantic and (I felt) didn't add very much to the 3rd ed. Camel's treatment of whichever subject.

    Effective Perl Programming was a delightful surprise. But, it still didn't add a huge amount to my personal knowledge. Programming Perls was the same way.

    If you want to learn to program, take a course.

    If you want to learn the language of Perl, read the Camel book, then hang out on PM.

    If you want to learn how to program well, it doesn't matter how many Perl books you read because you will still have a myopic view of programming. Read Code Complete and The Pragmatic Programmer for that knowledge.

    ------
    We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

    Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.

        I read it all the way through ... twice. The reason for twice was that I was sure I missed something the first time through. But, I hadn't.

        It's been a few months since I read it, but I remember reading it and thinking "Ummm ... Duh!" to pretty much every concept Conway put forth. If you want, I can go through the TOC and say why I felt that his treatment of the topic wasn't as good as Camel + PM ...

        ------
        We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

        Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.