To gain the 13 credits I need to graduate I enrolled for a 3 credit "Advanced Perl Independent Study." The good thing about that is that I get to play with Perl. The bad news is since it's independent I need to figure out what I wanna do with Perl to push my knowledge of it.

So far I'm good at using the features of the language I need to get the job done. The "job" usually includes web programming, and data munging. Part of what I want to do is nail down a lot of the nuances of the language I haven't explored before. Things I plan on including so far:

Any other ideas?? I'd be interested in links to good columns/tutorials/papers etc. What have you found to be the best way of learning things that you haven't been required to get the job done???

vroom | Tim Vroom | vroom@cs.hope.edu
  • Comment on Ask Perlmonks: What should be included in an "Advanced Perl Independent Study"?

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Re: Ask Perlmonks: What should be included in an "Advanced Perl Independent Study"?
by chipmunk (Parson) on Jan 22, 2001 at 10:56 UTC
    Some more ideas for advancing your knowledge of Perl:
    • Write an RFC for Perl6
    • XS: integrating Perl and C
    • Cross-platform Perl: common issues and how to deal with them (a hot topic in the Monastery today :)
    • Graphical interfaces with Perl: Tk, Win32::GUI, et al.
    • DBI: database access in Perl
    • Profiling with Devel::DProf and dprofpp
    Will you keep us informed about your independent study? I bet lots of monks besides just me will be interested in hearing your studies.
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Re: Ask Perlmonks: What should be included in an "Advanced Perl Independent Study"?
by extremely (Priest) on Jan 22, 2001 at 11:11 UTC
    Rip Everything2 apart and find a huge-ugly crufty part that should have been a module or three and fix it. =) Write up how refactoring live code projects for cleanliness gains the project speed, lowers code size, and improves maintainability.

    Update: chromatic warns me that I may have committed heresy by implying that Everything2 is anything but perfect. =) Let us split infinatives and say that we just want it to be more perfect, shall we? ;)

    --
    $you = new YOU;
    honk() if $you->love(perl)

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      extremely poses a very interesting point - kill two birds with one stone. During my very short college career of 11 years, I learned very quickly to combine projects _somehow_

      If you could find a few things about E2 that would fit in your studies, then you'll feel twice as good about yourself when you finish (and get a lot of stuff done).

      Jeff 

      L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
F--F--F--F--F--F--F--F--
(the triplet paradiddle)
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Re: Ask Perlmonks: What should be included in an "Advanced Perl Independent Study"?
by Fastolfe (Vicar) on Jan 22, 2001 at 11:12 UTC
    "On the job", I too, for practical reasons, kind of have to limit myself to the amount of Perl to Get The Job Done. On my own time, though, I'm always looking for nifty new things to experiment with, so I am always expanding my knowledge of Perl. There are two things, though, that have had an exceptional impact on what I've learned:
    1. PerlMonks. Seriously. Nothing helps you learn something better than teaching it to someon else. I have learned so much more here than most people here would know.
    2. Learning Perl's C/XS API. Seeing "behind the hood" and learning what makes each of Perl's little bits of magic work has allowed me a lot of insight into the ways that things are done. Optimizations, quirks and idioms kind of flow from that. Of course, a solid foundation in C programming helps immensely as well. It should be obvious to any "real" programmer that unshift will be considerably more expensive than push, but the thought never occurs to the introductory Perl novice.
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      The difference is less in current development snapshots than you might think, and the patch may find its way into 5.6.x at some point as well. See Speeding up unshift.
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        I know, and I do read p5p.. I just figured it didn't contribute to the point I was trying to make. :)
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Re: Ask Perlmonks: What should be included in an "Advanced Perl Independent Study"?
by turnstep (Parson) on Jan 22, 2001 at 21:19 UTC
    What have you found to be the best way of learning things that you haven't been required to get the job done???

    I point people towards obfuscated perl programs (good ones) as a great way of learning new features and thinking about things in a new way. Good obfuscation will bend and twist all the usual rules, forcing you to really learn the limits, normal uses, abnormal uses, and sheer abuse of common and not-so-common features of the language.

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      Hehe, I was just thinking, and take this as you will, but it would be mighty amusing if you include a small obfuscation as the footer* on each page of your paper that you will submit at the end of the term. I assume that you will write some kind of paper, be it a description of what you did or some an actual research paper, and this might make it a little more fun, and provide examples of the nuances of Perl.

      *Specifically, a different obfuscation on each page. I would not suggest coming up with all of them yourself either. Some - yes! - but not all. There are plenty of good one or two line obfuscations here that use various cool tricks, and you could use those. (with permission, of course!)

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