Reddit reviews Beginning Perl

Fun fact: I'm also an author, but it's a programming book that no one here would probably appreciate.

At the beginning of writing it, my editor kicked back a chapter because I made a joke about terrorism (in a programming book!). He asked if I thought that a joke about terrorism was appropriate in today's day and age. I simply replied "yes".

Shortly thereafter he stopped being my editor. I was told it was an internal reshuffle, but I don't think he liked me. (I also referred to STDIN as waiting for you patiently, like some creepy little stalker, but you'd really have to be a geek to get that. Interestingly my new editorial team were all female and they thought it was hilarious)

I think Beginning Perl by Curtis Poe is one of the best introductory texts for complete beginners.

> I purchased 3 books - Perl for Beginners, Perl by example, Learning Perl (6th edition)

I can't find a book called Perl for Beginners. If you mean Beginning Perl then that's a highly recommended book.

Learning Perl is also very good.

The two books above are written by acknowledged Perl experts.

Perl By Example appears to be written by someone who knows very little about Perl. I really can't recommend it. Sorry you wasted your money.

> Thanks for your help and support, real appreciated.

You're welcome. I'm sorry I wasn't able to be more help. It's nice to see new faces in the Perl community. I just don't swallow the "Perl 5 is dead" mantra. It's installed by default on an LSB compliant Linux install and just too damned useful a tool to be ignored.

Every new face I see proves me right.

Good luck with your project. If you get stumped again, feel free to ask more questions. I'll try to be more useful next time.

Also, since you're maintaining and (I presume) refactoring some Perl 5 code, you might be interested in Modern Perl, 4th Edition because it covers the Moose object system. Moose and kindred libraries Moo and Mouse are what make "Modern Perl 5" a thing in the minds of many.

If you're still struggling with the basics, check out Beginning Perl, 1st Edition by Curtis "Ovid" Poe. It's a wonderful text that is most definitely not stuck in the 1990's.

Modern Perl

Beginning Perl

Both good books

if you're developing in C++ and the other guys is programming in Perl, then that seems like a big Bus Factor for a small company withouth introducing even more languages.

Perl has some pretty good introductory books, including Learning Perl and Beginning Perl.

Also check out Perl's Excel handling on CPAN. Not sure how this compares to Python.