Beginning Perl

codemonk on 2004-10-26T21:57:21

Every journey begins with a first step. Isn't that what they say?

I'm an ex-system admin looking to broaden my skills by learning Perl. I've done some work with C and Java, but wanted to try something different. So far I have Beginning Perl, and Amazon should be sending me the Perl CD Bookshelf any day now.

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Welcome!

schwern on 2004-10-27T08:58:13

Enjoy the fruitcake.

Re:Welcome!

codemonk on 2004-10-27T19:11:07

Thanks :)

Don't just read the book...

jbodoni on 2004-10-27T15:32:04

Do the exercises. That's right, sit down in front of EMACS or vi or Notepad or whatever your favorite editor is, hammer out the code, make the typos and puzzle over the error messages, the whole bit.

You might want to check out perlmonks.org as well.

And welcome!

John

Re:Don't just read the book...

codemonk on 2004-10-27T19:18:19

Perlmonks, eh? Ok, will do.

One thing I like about Apress and Wrox books is that they have "Try It Out" sections that show small code examples of what is being explained. I also like the exercises at the end of each chapter. It helps me to have a full example to go through, to see it all in context.

Since I'm on a Windows machine, I'm using ActiveState's Perl, and trying out the personal edition of Komodo. I thought it would be good for a beginner because of the intellisense and built-in debugging, so it tells me as soon as I've typed a mistake. Very handy :)

-Sean