in reply to Learning Perl Online

learn Perl online, beyond basics

... for me, the best way to learn is to start writing programs, and see what problems you encounter..... everyone runs into the same types of problems over and over, so to really learn, you should force yourself to write something complex..... then you get a handle on data structures and all the advanced stuff like db access, threads, ipc, and all the things you see discussed here.

....personally, in my learning process, i evolved in a few steps, from programs where everything is simple scalar variables, onto arrays, then finally to hashes and all the AoA, HoA, etc etc stuff.

.... in general, you will find that most modules are like blessed hashes.... so you need to get your mind set into seeing things as a complex data structure ...... this is best accomplished by forcing your mind to design some.... like a "story book" problem of grade school, where the teacher asks you to actually use math to model and solve a real world problem

.... so choose some project that interests you, and start writing it....it goes step by step.... first you lay out the skeleton of the program, then step by step adding more complexity( watching for possible bugs each step of the way, and saving all developmental scripts, so you can fallback in case you make a design mistake

...you will not learn much by just reading other people's code....it's 90% perspiration.... so start writing and running code, and modifying other's code, and see what the modifications do.....

I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth.
Old Perl Programmer Haiku

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Re^2: Learning Perl Online
by dwm042 (Priest) on Nov 11, 2009 at 17:06 UTC
    zentara++! For me, programming is a learning by doing exercise. Find a problem that interests you; try to code it. If you don't succeed, look around and read stuff. If you already know coding basics, then learning Perl is more a matter of getting deeper into specifics. For those going from basics to mastery, you might want to look at such resources as the "Higher Order Perl" web pages.
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Re^2: Learning Perl Online
by Anonymous Monk on Nov 12, 2009 at 13:20 UTC
    You seems to emphasize on Perl things and module constructs rather than module itself. I am looking for a knowledge 'WHAT a module can do'. The implementation is secondary. Consider Template Toolkit or CGI::Application or Moose or even List::AllUtils. A brief course on these modules can help me tremendously to use them in my practices. 'What' is often an unknown territory and cannot come fully via dialogic approach because often it will miss your observations. Unless introduced in school, we may never be able to figure out the formula of H2O unless you are genius. I am not saying that I cannot pickup Perl on my own. I am just saying a fundamental introduction of these new concepts that programming introduces on top of school learning, must be practically usable with speed to shorten the learning curve.
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      .... you seem to be under the misconception that there is ORDER in all of this module stuff.... you must be coming from a Java background in the universites.. :-)

      ...this is the way it works.... modules are just giant code efforts to do some task, that everyone previously was doing with separate disparate scripts.... eventually some smarter coders but the code into packages to make it easier for others to use....but there is no rhyme nor reason to what makes it to a module, or even if it works anymore.....

      i don't think anyone in the Perl community wants to go thru all the modules out there, and write a book catagorizing what they do for you

      ...as to what Perl can do for you, it is only limited by your ingenuity and your knowledge of what a computer system can be used for.

      ...modules are just encapsulated code blocks....if you want to know what they do...look thru all the entries on CPAN, and start downloading and running the examples.....i can't even count the number of times that I've done: 

      perl Makefile.pl
make
su
make install
#look at examples

      [download]
      I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth.
      Old Perl Programmer Haiku
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[d/l]
      Yes, propaedeutics. Get a copy of "Perl Best Practices" by Damian Conway and read it. It'll get you started with a lot of the "best"ish modules for particular tasks.
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