By trade I am a Unix Systems Administrator and a Security Administrator. My interest in perl stemmed from all the buzz about it being a SysAdmins duct tape. I sure wasn't disapointed with perl, within weeks I'd almost rewritten all of my shell scripts in it. A few weeks later I undertook many tasks that I would have never even considered tackling with just a simple shell.

Well that was many years ago and I now have fond memories of that Computer Sci. student managment system I first worked on. I find that in my career I've come to rely so heavily on perl that I immediately install it on any system I touch(if for some reason it's not there). Perl has become a glue for all things Unix in my universe and I'd have a hard time living with out. Which brings me to this posting.

Despite the fact that I was actualy the sole Unix Admin for a Computer Science Department I do not have a computer science background. Infact outside of a few courses in c/c++ (and the ones I won't admit to in VB), I have very little academic education in programming. I actualy started programming when I was eight in gw-basic but I never really moved into anything complex (I'm really sorry that I didn't). Over the years I learned several simplier languages out of purely a want to get something done. What I'm leading to is that I am self taught in the arts of programming and in the kinds of things a Systems Administrator would want to do. Sysadmins don't tend to write large complex applications but somewhat smaller monolithic scripts glueing alot of things together. While I sure don't want to unlearn this skill (but perhapes many habits that go with it) I'd like to build a soild foundation of developing larger and more complex applications.

I'd like to ask my fellow monks to enlightment me with a source of knowledge (and hopefully books) about design theory. But I am no means a beginning programmer nor is my interst solely limited to the perl realm. I'm hoping that I can be pointed towards the path of becomming a much more acomplished and rounded programmer.

In reply to From the Void and into the Light... by Dogma

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