[Mastering-perl] Welcome to Mastering Perl

[brian d foy]

Thanks to everyone who has subscribed to the mailing list and has been
sending me comments on the proposal. I have a very different looking
proposal on the web site now. It' seems every time I fix something, I
end up re-writing most of the parts.

With a topic as general as "Mastering Perl" (which is only really
called that because "Advanced" is taken and this book comes after
"Intermediate Perl"), the outline is really just a polite agreement
between the publisher and the author about what the book will cover.
Think of it as programming the first version of software and you have
to write a spec without talking to the customer. Maybe there should be
a book just for that...

Since my topic is not specific, say, like "Programming the Perl DBI",
there isn't a natural set of topics or ordering of topics. What relly
goes into mastering Perl? Rather than enforce my particular view of
the Perl world or what I think Perl people should know, you're here to
provide the reality check, keep me close to the mainstream, and
ultimately produce the book you want to hand to your junior
programmers (after "Perl Best Practices", of course).

So far I have a few major concepts in mind, and I appreciate any
comments on these themes:

* Don't force Perl to be what you want it. Perl will always win. It's
a language, not a religion. Not only that, you have to know more of
the language that you use since you work with other people. Some
features are evil, but so are some coworkers.

* Programs are for humans, and although a lot of Tolkien fans may want
to read 50 pages about how someone got out of bed, maintenance
programmers don't want to read screenfuls of code to figure out what
you are going to do next.

* With just a little extra work, most Perl programs can be
configurable, portable, and flexible.

* A good Perl programmer knows what's going on inside his Perl
program. Luckily, Perl has a lot of tools that make that really simple
(just like most languages do).


--
brian d foy <brian.d.foy at gmail.com>
http://www.pair.com/~comdog/