My first introduction to Perl was back in 1996 when i started the road for my Computer Science degree. C++ was language of choice for the deptartment, we also had to learn enough assembly for the 8086 processor family to write a game in it, enough architecture to build simple computers with microchips, as well as understanding how an operating system works, how a compiler works, and any other electives we chose to take. So when a CGI course for Perl was offered in the Summer of 1998, i felt i was finally ready to learn some real Perl and jumped right in (note: learning the above items are not necessary to 'learn Perl', but are very important in understanding programming in general, which was-still is-my goal).

In this course we used Perl to write a series of CGI applications. We had to 'roll our own' CGI.pm, so to speak, but our professor understood the need for reusable software so we were introduced to cgi-lib.pl and this kinda newer module, CGI.pm. ;) Our final project was some sort of inventory control thingy that involved file locking and Berkley DBM's.

But that was not my first introduction to Perl. That was back sometime around 1996. maverick was the guy at our college that 'coded Perl', that dark and mysterious language that nobody talked about in class. I knew right then and there that Perl was the language for me - it took me another 4 years before eduardo hired me to work at Surfari.com with Maverick. That's when i really started learning Perl.

(By the way, one day in 1997 (after Eduardo and i took a Summer Java course)i was busy coding up a Java applet that would graph equations. I was stuck in a Java rut of having to take care of each and every condition. Ed pops along, "what are doing? in Java?!? check this out:" and in 10 minutes he wrote a Perl/Tk script that eval'ed the given equation. jeffa: "yeah, I need to learn this Perl thing...")

Just a few days after i started work at Surfari, Ed introduced Maverick and myself to this site. I have been here for less than 2 years now and my Perl skills have more than quintupled.

So, my advice to you is ... learn the basics. I learned the basics by enrolling in college and earning a degree. I understand that this is not option for everybody, your milleage will vary. Go back and read the Lllama book again, you will probably see that you missed a lot of things because programming is an iterative learning process: you do it over and over and over and over again until you get sick of it and find a better way: perl -le 'print join(" and ",("over")x100)'

jeffa

Lemon Curry?!?!

UPDATE: Recommended reading:

  1. Code - read this book
  2. Perl Cookbook - don't code without it
  3. Data Munging - very useful and practical book
  4. CGI Programming - although it is a bit old
  5. Network Programming - mind altering
  6. Object Oriented Perl - can't fully grow without OO
  7. perldoc - it's all right at your finger tips and free

In reply to (jeffa) Re: How did you learn Perl? by jeffa
in thread How did you learn Perl? by venimfrogtongue

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