What's the learning curve on Perl?
Hi,
Hoping you can answer this question for me please. Just how hard is it to learn Perl? I got a book the other day on Perl so I could learn Perl/CGI...I'm on about chapter 5 and I feel dumb as a box of hammers. I was just wondering if/when some lightbulbs would come on or should I just give up trying. Any suggestions/recommendations would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance.
John
interwovendesign.com
Quality web site design without the monthly maintenance fees!
Orpheus posted this at 05:37 — 17th February 2000.
They have: 568 posts
Joined: Nov 1999
Perl in my opinion was very easy to learn. But your talking to a guy who eats C for breakfast and dreams about UNIX shell scripts.
But the book Learning Perl 2nd Edition. It will teach you everything.
Y-2-Casey posted this at 12:46 — 29th February 2000.
They have: 15 posts
Joined: Dec 1999
Hello-
I'm hardly the brightest person the Internet, and I learned it (much to my surprise) in just a few weeks.
Good Luck!
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Casey Hansen
http://www.caseynet.com
"Computer geeks with attuitude"
Casey Hansen
http://www.caseynet.com
"Computer geeks with attuitude"
Justin S posted this at 23:28 — 29th February 2000.
They have: 2,076 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
I own the book Learning Perl (2nd Edition), and when I first read it I found it very confusing. I got to about the 2nd chapter. So I got a CGI book instead, read that, and than Perl was much easier. But maybe it's just me...
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Justin Stayton - [email] [icq]
japhy posted this at 02:32 — 1st March 2000.
They have: 161 posts
Joined: Dec 1999
Sigh. The first chapter of "Learning Perl" is entitled "An Overview of Perl". That's exactly what it is. Skip over it if you don't want to see some of the things Perl can do. Chapter 2 is where the real learning begins, and it is a simple (and proper) introduction to scalars. Very basic thing.
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MIDN 4/C PINYAN, NROTCURPI, US Naval Reserve
Justin S posted this at 02:36 — 1st March 2000.
They have: 2,076 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
Sorry, but not everyone is as smart as you Japhy
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[This message has been edited by Justin Stayton (edited 29 February 2000).]
Justin Stayton - [email] [icq]
Suzanne posted this at 20:11 — 1st March 2000.
She has: 5,507 posts
Joined: Feb 2000
I found Perl For Dummies 2nd Edition fairly thorough, with the O'Reilly Pocket Reference on the side.
Also...
http://www.cgi101.com/class/
http://stars.com/Authoring/Scripting/Tutorial/toc.html
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Training/PerlIntro/
http://www.irt.org (thorough tutorials and code)
As far as the actual learning curve, if you have any programming experience, even JavaScript, it is fairly minimal. The trick is to not move on until you ACTUALLY understand the chapter. I kept trying to leap ahead to serve my own needs, but eventually I wised up and started at the beginning again and did it right.
www.activestate.com has a perl for windows that is just great for testing if you don't have telnet capabilities and still want to learn.
Have fun!
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Zero Cattle
Suzanne
Tables DeMystified
[This message has been edited by Suzanne (edited 01 March 2000).]
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