Embedding Perl in HTML with Mason is a excellent book for what it does, though I'm not a fan of what it does.

More specifically, I really don't like the embed-one-language-in-another thing, primarily for maintainability reasons. A Mason-based website needs maintainers who understand HTML, Perl and Mason -- even if the first two knowledges are fairly common, and the third is fairly easy to pick up, it's a significant hurdle to ease of maintainability; and if a site can't be maintained easily/effectively by all of the people that admin it then quality will really suffer.

When it comes to more complex issues than simply serving web pages (eg performance and security) a still more rigorous knowledge of Mason will be required, in addition to the Perl-knowledge; resulting in a site that significantly fewer people could maintain well than could maintin a comparable perl-only site.

That aside, this is an excellent book -- in particular Ch 8: Building a Mason Site, Ch 9: Mason and CGI and Ch 11: Recipes make it easy to get to grips with real application of the language, work out how to do what you want to do, and put into play a Mason site quickly and efficiently.

Oh, and the answer to the most important question is -- it's an Arabian baboon

In reply to Re: Free Perl/Mason Book Online by Callum
in thread Free Perl/Mason Book Online by fredopalus

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