In my opinion, the best way to learn a language like perl is by using it to solve a problem. The easiest way is if there is a real problem to solve, but you can solve made-up problems/exercises if you have the motivation and will-power to do it. Finding a problem can be hard, but good CS books (e.g. SICP) are full of them. Even if the book uses a different language, you'll find that a lot of the problems transfer well to perl. The hard part would be filtering out the ones which don't translate well. Does anyone know of a resource of good programming exercises in perl?

Then, when you are working on your solution to the problem, you can ask here for comments, advice and help. That's quite a good way of learning.

This leads me to speculate - would there be any value in a section of perlmonks for this kind of activity? The main difference to Seekers of Perl Wisdom would be the presumption of inexperience on the part of the person asking the question and perhaps also a different tenor of reply - focussed around education rather than solving the problem. (Perlmonks is already amazingly good at this but I wonder if a section with a different emphasis might be of value).

(I'll answer my own speculation with a "probably not", but I think it's interesting to consider).

In reply to Re: Study Perl with somebuddy ? by jbert
in thread Study Perl with somebuddy ? by tobox

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