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Re: Material for a quick Perl Tutorial
by Maclir (Curate) on Aug 24, 2000 at 02:09 UTC
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I agree with Ovid, your outline is too ambitious for a 60 minute session. Skip the "cutesy" stuff- the whimsey / perlisms. In my view, obfuscation / perl golf / poetry are not part of "professional programming".
What is the aim of the session? To raise general awareness of perl? As a lead to getting increased use of perl in your shop? First, get your aims clear in your head of what the purpose is. I spent some time being trained "the Army way" of teaching courses. They all started with "In this lesson you will be taught . . ." and "At the end of this lesson you will be able to . . .". Useful for people that need to be shown which end of a rifle you point at the bad guys, but even though I never say that at the start of my training sessions - I work it out before hand. That stops it degenerating into a meaningless ramble and chewing the fat session.
As far as examples, what is a hot button in your area at the moment? Are you working on dynamic web pages? Set up a simple exercise using CGI.pm, maybe throw in some DBI stuff. You will have to set up some stuff beforehand, but that is pretty nifty to show. Hey, anyone can know up a useful web application in an hour!
As far as the reference material goes - both on line and dead tree formats - have that as part of your handout (you are going to leave them with something to take away, aren't you?). Just mention that there are a range of good reference and tutorial books, plus a vast array of tools on the web (CPAN, PM, yada, yada).
Finally, if part of the aim is a little subtle evangalism, a few introductory remarks on the current demand for good perl programmers. Throw in some $ amounts. This can be a great lead in - "Why are perl programmers in such demand, and why are they paid so much more than VB hackers?" Appeal to our baser instincts - since gratutious sex is probably out, money is a close second :).
Maclir
Just Another Perl Slacker | [reply] |
Re: Material for a quick Perl Tutorial
by indigo (Scribe) on Aug 24, 2000 at 02:00 UTC
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Leave out section one. You could do a full hour on each, but neither is really crucial to getting up and going in Perl.
Leave out section two. I know this is the stuff that makes Perl so cool, but newcomers won't be able to appreciate it--JAPH, golf, and obfuscation can be downright scary.
Section three is good. Discuss special variables there,
towards the end.
Consider saving section four for it own class.
Section five would make a good handout, rather than a lecture topic. Consider added usenet to your resource list.
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I once had 2 hours for a similar task. I did 1, briefly,
then 3 for most of the rest of the time and barely had time
to touch on anything else. People found that useful.
OTOH this was many moons ago, and the people there knew
less programming than they thought...YMMV.
But it takes longer to say things than you think it will.
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(Ovid) Re: Material for a quick Perl Tutorial
by Ovid (Cardinal) on Aug 24, 2000 at 01:33 UTC
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From some demos (but not classes) that I have put on in the past, I have to say that I think you are probably going to be covering too much in one hour. If most of this is on paper for them to read later, you could do it, but then most won't read it (in my experience).
I would recommend that you get a few friends (preferably at the same skill level as your prospective students) together and do a "run-through" of the class and encourage your friends to ask questions and act like real students. You'll quickly find out what the problem areas are, what takes too long, what's not interesting, etc.
Cheers,
Ovid | [reply] |
About that obfuscation...
by myocom (Deacon) on Aug 24, 2000 at 01:52 UTC
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Depending on what preconceived notions about Perl your target audience might have, you may want to skip the Obfuscations bit. If they already think of Perl as a 'write-only' language, this will only help to reinforce their (mistaken) beliefs... | [reply] |
Re: Material for a quick Perl Tutorial
by Cirollo (Friar) on Aug 24, 2000 at 01:31 UTC
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Sounds like you have it pretty figured out. One thing: don't forget use strict and -w :) | [reply] |
Re: Material for a quick Perl Tutorial
by Punto (Scribe) on Aug 24, 2000 at 17:14 UTC
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I think it's too much for an hour. If they have a programming background, they'll want a simple, 'tutorial like' thing, to start writting code right away (at least thats what I wanted when I started learning perl). I'd do:
Syntax
Variables (including how to get the CGI and cookie variables)
Expressions, operators (including the werid stuff like regexp, $_, etc)
Flow control, functions
Writting and reading files and other processes
Other useful features (sending mail, mysql, maybe regexps could be here..)
Resources.
They can get into the rest of the stuff later.
I'd use the PHP manual as a reference. It's very brief and clear.
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