[kw-pm] Perl & XML review (fwd)

[Daniel R. Allen]

And here, in inimitable Lloyd fashion, is a very honest review of the
book, Perl & XML.

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Perl & XML Review

Well the time has come for me to sing for my supper. O'Reilly was kind
enough to give kw.pm a copy of the book Perl & XML in exchange for a
review, so here goes.

At our last pub social I was surprised when one of our true mavins of all
things geek suddenly burst out in fulsome praise for this very book (Now
you know what PerlMongers talk about after they've had a few beers, XML).
OK so he didn't exactly praise the book, oh OK so he trashed it. So you
have to write a review of a book and arguably one of the smartest guys you
know has just ripped it to shreds. Furthermore does my opinion stand any
chance of  not being coloured by the fact that I did not pay $54.95CDN for
the book, that I indeed got it as free as in free beer ( yeah OK so I had
to write this, me getting paid to write ha ha ha now that is a joke).

Well, what did I think of the book? I think it did give me a good
introduction to how the Perl community is interacting with the XML
community. The authors do talk about names, personalities and religious
wars. Not much that I had not already gathered from the web but it is
reassuring for me to see it in print. I'm interested in Perl, I'm
interested in XML, what does the intersection of those to worlds look
like? I think this book is a pretty good little pocket map.

That may have made a good magazine article, but a book? Well there are
code examples, but it is too slim a volume to be a handbook on the Perl
XML modules. As my friend pointed out don't read this book, read the
documentation. Also, at points I thought they were trying to assure
someone that Perl could do real XML. Could we not assume that anyone who
had even scratched the surface of Perl would already know Perl can do
anything and also that you probably would not have picked up this book
unless you had scratched the surface of Perl. A little preaching to the
choir?

Thanks O'Reilly, but if you have to pay $54.95 for this book, save your
money for one of their more worthy products.

Lloyd


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dcarr at sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org