[Mastering-perl] Check out the chapters on configuration, subroutines, and Pod

[brian d foy]

On 9/20/06, Derek B. Smith <derekbellnersmith at yahoo.com> wrote:

> so how does this book differ from Programming Perl?

Programming Perl is a reference for the language. It's the bible. With
Mastering Perl, I don't have to cover everything, and I can throw in
wisdom about various things. There is what Perl let's you do, and the
Camel tells you that, and then there is what you should do, and that's
what I'm going for in Mastering Perl. Also, I'm talking about actually
making things with Perl, where Programming Perl was more about the
tools that the core language gives you. Mastering Perl integrates a
lot of things that are more task specific.

Also, in Mastering Perl I'm talking a lot of dealing with things you
can't control, such as other people's coding style and the odd things
they do. Mastering the language means you can take the ball of mud
that someone else gives you and figure out how to fix it. That
includes any really odd things they did, such as symbol table
manipulation (yes, people write their own importers), source filters,
etc.


> And I thought the path from Learning Perl to
> Programming Perl was good, do yo really think I need
> to read intermediate perl and or mastering perl?

Here's where I say a lot but don't really answer your question:

It's different for every person. Intermediate Perl has a guided path
through making modules, and it has exercises at the end of each
chapter. That works really well for some people. Other people, often
those with extensive programming experience in several languages,
don't need that much help and can go right into things. But, I should
caution, there is a Perly way to do things, so sometimes experience
with things such as Java might frustrate you when you try to do it the
same way in Perl.

Although I'd really like to earn a lot of money through royalties, I
don't really think everyone needs to buy every book. However, I've
often bought books I didn't need, and learned something from a
footnote that ended up being much more valuable than the purchase
price. Since I mostly do Perl everyday, if I save a single hour
because of one thing I learn, that's worth a book.

With Mastering Perl, you can look at the website
(http://www.pair.com/comdog/mastering_perl/) to see it before you buy
it. If, right now, you see some topics missing, there is still a
chance for me to get them into the book :)


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