(zdog) RE: Perldoc's vrs. Books, and RTFM's

I tend to disagree. I find that books are a great place to learn any programming language from, but I also find that perldoc is a great reference as well. Sometimes, however, it is a little difficult to find the information you need, so I don't mind when I have a question and another monk points me to a perldoc . However, I do think that you can't learn Perl from perldocs and that having some kind of book or tutorial is better.

Update: I came up with an idea that puts what I am trying to say in a nutshell: You buy the books to learn how to read the docs.

Zenon Zabinski | zdog | zdog7@hotmail.com

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RE: RE: Perldoc's vrs. Books, and RTFM's by atl (Pilgrim) on Aug 12, 2000 at 13:15 UTC
Agreed. Furthermore, readmes, howtos, perldocs etc. have one really big advantage: have you ever tried to carry the equivalent of 1 GB in book form? Hell, the stuff that fits on the HD of my notebook would fill several suitcases! Believe it or not, whenever possible, I'm reading on my notebook's display instead of paper. Just my 2 cents :-) ... Andreas	[reply]
RE (tilly) 2: Perldoc's vrs. Books, and RTFM's by tilly (Archbishop) on Aug 12, 2000 at 18:05 UTC
Absolutely! As I said, I have a lot of animals running around my house. It is far easier for me to get an overview from a book. But once I have done that, learned the concepts, seen examples, etc, the final arbitrator is always going to be what is locally installed. Why? Well suppose that, like me, you run Perl 5.005_03. Suppose you buy Camel 3 so you can learn to use it. Well then here is a list of features that you will be led to believe that you can use which, in fact, you can't! Like you I buy books and learn from them. However when I need the answer to be right, I won't rely on books.	[reply]