Thing to remember is that there are two criteria for how
good a book is - how well you learn from it and how useful
the stuff is that it teaches you. Someone might learn really
well from a 'Dummies' style book, but because 'Perl for
Dummies' teaches some really bad habits, it's still a bad
idea to try and learn from it.
Simon Cozens wrote a good article about
Choosing a Perl book
for www.perl.com.
The only Perl books that I've seen that teach beginners
Perl both well and factually are "Learning Perl", "Elements
of Programming with Perl" and "Perl - The Programmers
Companion". I've also heard good reports about "Beginning
Perl" and "Teach Yourself Perl in 24 Hours" - but not
having read them yet I can't really comment.
--
<http://www.dave.org.uk>
European Perl Conference - Sept 22/24 2000, ICA, London
<http://www.yapc.org/Europe/>
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I've also heard good reports about "Beginning Perl" and "Teach Yourself Perl in 24 Hours" - but not having read them yet I can't really comment
Wrox sent me "Beginning Perl", so I read it. Simon did a good job, however he has said that the editors introduced some errors. He was not happy when the book first came out. But, overall it is a very good book for beginners. TYPi24H, by Clinton Pierce, is also a pretty good book. I did a technical review for it when he was still writing it, and it was very good, although now stigmatized because it has a time duration in it's title :) So, these books could be useful for someone wanting to learn Perl. I always find it best to be in a bookstore, grab a latte, and read some of each book (as well as the index, and TOC) to see which is written in a way you feel most comfortable with.
Cheers,
KM
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I always find it best to be in a bookstore, grab a
latte, and read some of each book (as well as the index,
and TOC) to see which is written in a way you feel most
comfortable with.
A very civilised way to buy books - let's see Amazon
come up with something like that on the web (and patent
it!)
My point was that by doing that, you can get a pretty
good grasp of how well you'll be able to interact with a
book's teaching style, but unless you know something about
the subject then it's difficult to know how factually
accurate the book will be. And if you want to learn Perl
then chances are that you know very little about it.
I have no solution to this problem. I just wanted to
point out that when people say "this book was really good"
then they generally mean that they enjoyed the style rather
than that the book taught good Perl.
--
<http://www.dave.org.uk>
European Perl Conference - Sept 22/24 2000, ICA, London
<http://www.yapc.org/Europe/>
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i also got started with this book... i originally bought it so i could understand a database script we were using a little better and i got hooked :)
and i'm a windows brat.. go figure
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jrsmith wrote:
i originally bought it so i could understand a database script we were using a little better and i got hooked :)
Well, then the experience I and my client had with the book doesn't seem to be universally applicable.
However if I remember correctly the first scripts in the book reads from the commnand line (I don't have the book handy)? So if that's conceptually easy for you to grasp then that stumbling block is out of the way. My client choked right there,and was quite angry at me for recommending the book. Maybe it still has to do with different backgrounds though. My first job as a professional programmer (after churning through assembly, pascal and cobol in school) was as a HyperCard programmer and that is probably what made the command line so alien to me. There is a command line in HyperCard but you only exececute HyperTalk from it, no custom input. Even today I'd rather write a perl/tk script than read from the command line :-)
/jeorgen
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Sadly, I have no unix background. I am a windows admin, with a VB background from years ago. I knew absoluteley nothing about Perl. I think choosing a book really requires going to the mega-store an flipping through 20 of them. Individuals take to books differently.
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