Back when I was a wee lad (in college), I had a part time job working as a network consultant. I was introduced to Perl when I started working with some software we decided to use to produce one of the very early spam-filtering whatsits. I thought it was okay, but I didn't really get it. I'd primarily had experience with Pascal, C, C++, and Java up to that point. I also started using PHP (
3.x) to built a web site for the company around the same time and liked it some.<br><br>Then, I graduated right after 9-11, so I decided that rather than braving the already tanking job market (and since I couldn't figure out what else to do), I decided being paid to get a MS in Computer Science was a good idea (and I still think it was). Anyway, about a semester in I was trying to figure out what language I liked. Java was starting to drive me batty. PHP's utter lack of proper OO and namespaces repulsed me. I gave Python a whirl and decided that having only one right way to do things was almost as bad as Java, so I tried Perl again and learned a bit more about it. After reading a few things about it and reading Larry Wall's latest couple Apocalypse's and was sold on what Perl would become (not that I don't like most of what Perl is, but Perl 6 rocks my socks).
<br><br>I read Learning Perl and the entirety of Programming Perl to get started. I've since looked through Programming Perl again to refresh myself, and Perl Best Practices (and threw out 70% ;). Most of what I learn now I learn by finding modules I like on CPAN and reading the code to see how they work (so much for Perl being a write-only language).
<br><br>Cheers,<br>Andrew<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 10/5/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Scott Kahler</b> <<a href="mailto:scottk@uclick.com">scottk@uclick.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
This brought to mind a question that comes up every once in awhile. How did<br>you go about learning perl?<br><br>My experience was that I read the first half of Elements of Programming with<br>Perl and then jumped it. I happened to be in a heavily perl shop and and
<br>had a VB6 background. Aside from the basics I got from that book most my<br>learning came from digging through code, flipping back and forth through<br>Perl Cookbook and creating the occasional disaster and asking the "real"
<br>hackers questions. If I recall my point of enlightenment in order were<br><br>1) variable without types, sweet!<br>2) damn hashes are cool<br>3) wow, there is a lot of stuff on CPAN<br>4) wow, there is a lot of crap on CPAN
<br>5) DBI is good<br>6) mod_perl<br>7) template toolkit = love<br>8) creating module packages is damn handy<br><br>I'm still working enlightenment via map, the greatness of OO perl and what<br>the hell is so cool about cramming a bunch of functions in one line (to the
<br>point it looks like you opened a binary file in vim) but I imagine<br>eventually I'll get there.<br><br>I think my experience isn't uncommon with perl people and was wondering what<br>path others took.<br><br>
Scott Kahler<br><br><br>On 10/4/07 10:52 PM, "djgoku" <<a href="mailto:djgoku@gmail.com">djgoku@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><br>> Learning Perl 4th Edition<br>> Authors: Randal L. Schwartz, Tome Phoenix & brian d foy
<br>> ISBN: 0-596-10105-8<br>> <a href="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnperl4/">http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnperl4/</a><br>><br>> Review by Jonathan C. Otsuka<br>> Kansas City Perl Mongers<br>>
<a href="http://kc.pm.org">http://kc.pm.org</a><br>> 2007-10-04<br>><br><br><br><br>--<br>Scott Kahler<br>Systems Engineer<br>uclick, LLC (an Andrews McMeel Universal Company)<br><a href="mailto:scottk@uclick.com">scottk@uclick.com
</a><br><a href="http://www.uclick.com">www.uclick.com</a> <a href="http://www.gocomics.com">www.gocomics.com</a><br><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>kc mailing list<br><a href="mailto:kc@pm.org">
kc@pm.org</a><br><a href="http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/kc">http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/kc</a><br></blockquote></div><br>