[Kc] Where did your perl come from?

Andrew Sterling Hanenkamp sterling at hanenkamp.com
Fri Oct 5 13:39:29 PDT 2007


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.

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).

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).

Cheers,
Andrew

On 10/5/07, Scott Kahler <scottk at uclick.com> wrote:
>
> This brought to mind a question that comes up every once in awhile.  How
> did
> you go about learning perl?
>
> My experience was that I read the first half of Elements of Programming
> with
> Perl and then jumped it.  I happened to be in a heavily perl shop and and
> had a VB6 background. Aside from the basics I got from that book most my
> learning came from digging through code, flipping back and forth through
> Perl Cookbook and creating the occasional disaster and asking the "real"
> hackers questions. If I recall my point of enlightenment in order were
>
> 1) variable without types, sweet!
> 2) damn hashes are cool
> 3) wow, there is a lot of stuff on CPAN
> 4) wow, there is a lot of crap on CPAN
> 5) DBI is good
> 6) mod_perl
> 7) template toolkit = love
> 8) creating module packages is damn handy
>
> I'm still working enlightenment via map, the greatness of OO perl and what
> the hell is so cool about cramming a bunch of functions in one line (to
> the
> point it looks like you opened a binary file in vim) but I imagine
> eventually I'll get there.
>
> I think my experience isn't uncommon with perl people and was wondering
> what
> path others took.
>
> Scott Kahler
>
>
> On 10/4/07 10:52 PM, "djgoku" <djgoku at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Learning Perl 4th Edition
> > Authors: Randal L. Schwartz, Tome Phoenix & brian d foy
> > ISBN: 0-596-10105-8
> > http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnperl4/
> >
> > Review by Jonathan C. Otsuka
> > Kansas City Perl Mongers
> > http://kc.pm.org
> > 2007-10-04
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Scott Kahler
> Systems Engineer
> uclick, LLC (an Andrews McMeel Universal Company)
> scottk at uclick.com
> www.uclick.com www.gocomics.com
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> kc at pm.org
> http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/kc
>
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