Re: Structured Learning of Perl, Important or Not?

I can't help you with figuring out the study/family balance, but ...

Perl is not a great language to use to learn programming. It's not clear from your post whether you're already a programmer or not - if you are, then great, carry on with perl, you'll find it really useful just for managing your own data even if you never use it for an assignment or commercially. But if you're not already a programmer, then IMO you're better off starting with something lower-level like C or even an assembler, as you'll get a much better feeling for how computers *really* work - and you'll also appreciate languages like perl, Java and Haskell much more when you get to them!

Comment on Re: Structured Learning of Perl, Important or Not?

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Re^2: Structured Learning of Perl, Important or Not? by matze77 (Friar) on Dec 03, 2008 at 13:49 UTC
I agree with you that you will learn more through C or assembler (I had a few steps at both). As sure as you learn more about your computer by using linux (with shell ofc) compared to windows, the marketing freaks want us to believe that computers are as easy to use as toasters ... ;-) - But - i really was annoyed by C with my first steps (in programming at all), cause it was really hard to get something working, which was bad for motivation to do more. (I regret now i actually never really did more, tried harder but i was a young padawan in these days ...) Maybe this was also related to the fact that our "instructor" professor was a very good C Programmer but a very bad teacher ... and we had to do C "Programming" on paper sheets cause there werent enough computers available for all students, but thats another story. I learned much more at a 4 week fulltime intense course at "Basic" Programming with an excellent instructor (who was not the best programmer ;-)). But that depends on you i am only (partly) an autodidact but its much easier for me to get a small basic (by a course e.g.) from which i can teach myself. hth	[reply]

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Re^2: Structured Learning of Perl, Important or Not?
by matze77 (Friar) on Dec 03, 2008 at 13:49 UTC

As sure as you learn more about your computer by using linux (with shell ofc) compared to windows, the marketing freaks want us to believe that computers are as easy to use as toasters ... ;-)

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