All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

Skip "PERL in Easy Steps"

samtregar on 2004-11-22T17:20:43

I found myself in a Barnes and Noble store this weekend, and of course I had to browse the Perl shelf. Alas, my book is gone. But I did spot a new one: PERL in Easy Steps. It's on Barnes and Noble's imprint and they're selling it very cheap compared to the competition.

Now, I didn't read the whole thing, but I did notice a few striking features. First, the author doesn't know a thing about the name "Perl". He insists on capitalizing it throughout the book (ex. PERL) and claims in the first paragraph that it stands for "Practical Enquiry and Reporting Language." Now we all know that Perl isn't really acronym, but even when it is it's Extraction, not Enquiry!

Second, the author doesn't seem to understand the distinction between Perl and CGI. The inside flap lists variables that can be used in Perl, but it's really a list of a few CGI environment variables. Of course that list is completely useless if you're doing things right and using CGI.pm!

As a final note, the book includes no author information that I could find. I looked in the front, in the back and on both covers. Aside from the name, Mike McGrath, I couldn't find anything else about him. Is he a Perl programmer? I doubt it!

So that's what you get for $9. Oh well.

-sam

the book includes no author information

cog on 2004-11-22T18:34:43

Check out his link and look at the books he's written :-)

The guy seems to be doing "easy steps" all over the place :-)

Re:the book includes no author information

samtregar on 2004-11-22T18:56:47

Yeah, I'm sure those books are just great!

-sam

Re:the book includes no author information

cog on 2004-11-22T19:07:10

You know, this thing has provoked the best laughs I had all day :-)

Oh well, let's kill the author :-)

Re:the book includes no author information

n1vux on 2004-11-23T18:13:10

Possibly there is no such person. Mike McGrath could be a "house name" for this series, with each written "for hire" by a different nameless hack. The lack of Author Info is suggestive.

Re:the book includes no author information

cog on 2004-11-23T18:18:27

Yes, you're probably right... :-)

Oh, oh, oh, what's the name of that movie "director"? Come on, guys, you know what I'm talking about! Help me out! :-)

anonymous in shame

wickline on 2004-11-23T22:17:05

That would be Alan Smithee.

-matt

Re:anonymous in shame

cog on 2004-11-23T22:29:18

Yes! That's it! :-)

There's even a movie about a guy named Alan Smithee who has just finished a movie but doesn't want to use his real name, so people tell him: "use Alan Smithee instead." and he goes "I can't!!! That's my real name!!!" :-)

And yes, one of the directors of that movie is, of course, Alan Smithee :-)

Perl Book Litmus Test

schwern on 2004-11-23T00:21:15

If you get a chance run it through the Perl Book Litmus Test and let me know what happens. It would be funny if that was still useful five years later.

Re:Perl Book Litmus Test

samtregar on 2004-11-23T21:38:45

I went by the bookstore on my lunchbreak and ran the test:

  • localtime: PASS
  • open() or die: PASS, although the description is very brief and the only example shown is open(). All the other examples have no error checking.
  • srand: PASS, no mention
  • array size: PASS
  • flock: PASS, although many examples that should use it don't, like the example counter script.
  • portable constants: FAIL. The examples of flock() pass raw numbers.

Overall a pretty decent result for a pretty bad book! I think the litmus test could use some updating. XML parsed with regexes, CGI parameter parsing without modules, failing to mention CPAN at least 10 times, etc.

-sam

Re:Perl Book Litmus Test

schwern on 2004-11-30T05:05:27

open() or die: PASS, although the description is very brief and the only example shown is open(). All the other examples have no error checking.

I'd probably consider this to be a fail. "Do as I say, don't do as I do" is bad in a tech learning book.

I think the litmus test could use some updating. XML parsed with regexes, CGI parameter parsing without modules, failing to mention CPAN at least 10 times, etc.

For sure. But its still amusing that the old tests continue to catch crappy books.

Re: Skip "PERL in Easy Steps"

davorg on 2004-11-23T16:32:00

Have you considered sending a technical review to the publishers and the author? I've found that people have be surprisingly amenable to that approach.

Re: Skip "PERL in Easy Steps"

samtregar on 2004-11-23T16:37:30

For what purpose? I'm sure the problems I noticed are just the tip of the iceberg. Besides, I like to get paid to do tech reviews on comercial products! I reserve my free work is for open source projects only.

-sam

Re: Skip "PERL in Easy Steps"

davorg on 2004-11-23T17:12:29

Well, largely because if no-one tells them that they are publishing bad books then they'll continue to publish bad books and people will continue to buy them.

Of course, it's possible that they already know they're publishing bad books, but they don't care :)