Cheap Perl books == false economy?

[Andy Selby]

> On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 01:29:04PM +0100, Andy Selby wrote:
>> I found "The Complete Reference Perl" on eBay for 99p
>> But its for Perl 5.6
>> is it worth it?
>> would it teach me outdated practices?
>> should I, instead, buy new at full price?
>
> Firstly, why do you think you want to buy the book?  What do you
> expect to get from it?

Its a cheap impulse buy, although I have put a tenner on it.

> Different books suit different people at different stages of
> programming.  Why not think up what an ideal Perl book for you would
> cover and tell us about it?  I've not read the particular book you
> mention and I don't know exactly what you might want from it, although
> I've got a rough idea.

A guide to the module Dont::GetDistracted::WhenYouShouldBeLearningPerl.
Or hang it over my head like the sword of Damocles to motivate myself
to learn Perl
/me goes to research sword of Damocles on wikipedia, ends up on
article about the F22 Raptor half an hour later.

> I'm happy to talk about this on Tuesday if I'm not fast asleep..

Sure thing, I promise to be more serious by then

> I've seen Perl books published recently, littered with errors, that I
> wouldn't recommend to anyone.  Ever.  But they might tell you a thing
> or two about some of Perl's recent features.  So what?

Review them here http://birmingham.pm.org/revs/main
The page needs a few recent reviews.

> Then again, older Perl books can't consider newer modules (as
> mentioned by oliver on IRC), so there's some merit in newer books.

Modules on CPAN usually have example code, its easy to paste that code
into your program and modify it to work,
no book needed.

> I guess I'd figure out what you want to learn, then ask which book
> might help achive that rather than buying stuff just because it
> happens to be cheap on ebay at the moment.

/me whistles nonchalantly

> Tom

Andy