Herein lies my quest: I'm sure O'Reilly or someone has thought of this (or something similar). I'm just curious who. I really want this book.

Perl 6 Primer

Part one is written for people who are learning Perl for the first time on 6. Basically it's something I could use on my intro to Perl students. It could even be useful for experienced programmers in the context of "pretend for a moment that Perl 6 is a totally new language".

Part two is for people who already know Perl and want a quick jump start/reference on the changes. This is for my co-workers, people who have taken the intro perl class 4 times, even for myself if it had a couple of quick ref "comparative syntax" pages and a "checklist to remember while translating Perl 5 to Perl 6".

It's a shortish book, under "Perl in a Nutshell" and over the "Perl 5 Pocket Reference". I want it to be short enough that I don't get the usual "I'll never get through that!" groans. It should be unintimidating but informative. The Apocalypses and Exegeses are a bit much for the average Perl user (i.e. not people on this site, but people in an intro class, in a LUG, at a tech con...). The thing that bothers me is that I seem to encounter more fear and disbelief than enthusiasm whenever I get in a conversation about Perl 6. I know llama and camel will be revised, but I also want something I can point people to and say, "No, Perl 6 is really cool. Go buy this book, it's only $15, and it will get you up to speed quickly".

If possible, the book would be released a few months before the full production version of Perl 6, with a revision released on a fairly short schedule to catch up with all the changes that are sure to happen in the first months. I figure whoever's working on it is starting about now so it has time to work its way through the publishing process.

Has anyone heard of such a creature, or rumors of such a creature?

--
"You can do things that change everything without changing anything." -- Brian Ingerson on Perl 6, YAPC::NA::2001

In reply to The Quest for the Holy Grail...erm...Book by BigAl

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