[Melbourne-pm] beginner at Perl trying to learn it

[Peter Machell]

On 19/08/2008, at 5:54 PM, John Thornton wrote:

>             If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions on any of this I
> would be pleased to hear them. But bear in mind that I am not a  
> computer
> person. I try to be one and succeed as often as I fail.

Hi John. I don't grok what your desired outcome is.

Perl is an extremely powerful language and is really the best "Swiss  
Army Knife" of software available.

Having said that like you I am not a programmer. Whenever I go back to  
Perl I have to spend quite a bit of learning time, because I don't  
work with it much - maybe once a month.

So I now find myself doing most programming and scripting work in  
Python. Its focus is on there being one "correct" way to do anything.  
This is very different and not as powerful as Perl, but much easier  
for us non programmers to work with occasionally.

So by all means learn and work with Perl if your objective is to  
become a programmer professionally, but if you just want a tool to do  
the odd quick scripting or programming job, I'd recommend Python.

regards,
Peter.