seconded. larry wall's one of the most interesting people on the planet. he's got an uncanny ability to wrap his mind around *everything*, and spit it all back out in a clear, consise, and humorous manner. he'd be ubercool for a/. interview.
can't say i completely disagree with the sentiment in the original post. perl's not the most intuitive language, and it certainly can be difficult to grasp some of it's more esoteric features. one of the amazing things about the language, however, is that one doesn't *have* to grasp it's totality to do astounding things in short periods of time. perl's just damn good at what it does, and once you've figured out the basics, you can do just about anything, do it well, and do it quickly.
That's the wonderful Perl Cookbook does. And it does so splendly. I've only ever bought one Perl book -- this one -- but I've bought it three times.:-)
the first perl book i picked up was the camel book, and it's served me well.. got my second copy last week actually. the first one didn't hold up to my repeated perusings, and apparently decided to run away. i can't imagine a better investment though. there's more information packed into those few hundred pages then i'd have thought possible.
I will admit that if you know Perl well, then yes, you can write powerful programs quickly ithin particular domains (notibly cgi scripting), some might even enjoy this.
isn't this a rather important feature? certainly it's possible to write utterly incomprehensable code in perl. that's possible in any language. the beauty of perl is the fact that buried in all that potental confusion is a truly powerful and intuitive solution to just about whatever problem one faces. not many languages can claim to be as diverse as perl, and the languages that do encompass the same broad spectrum don't (in my experience) do it nearly as cleanly. *shrug* perl's not for everyone, but it's invaluable to those who don't like learning new syntax every time they face a new problem.
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seconded. larry wall's one of the most interesting people on the planet. he's got an uncanny ability to wrap his mind around *everything*, and spit it all back out in a clear, consise, and humorous manner. he'd be ubercool for a /. interview.
mikecan't say i completely disagree with the sentiment in the original post. perl's not the most intuitive language, and it certainly can be difficult to grasp some of it's more esoteric features. one of the amazing things about the language, however, is that one doesn't *have* to grasp it's totality to do astounding things in short periods of time. perl's just damn good at what it does, and once you've figured out the basics, you can do just about anything, do it well, and do it quickly.
the first perl book i picked up was the camel book, and it's served me well.. got my second copy last week actually. the first one didn't hold up to my repeated perusings, and apparently decided to run away. i can't imagine a better investment though. there's more information packed into those few hundred pages then i'd have thought possible.
mikeI will admit that if you know Perl well, then yes, you can write powerful programs quickly ithin particular domains (notibly cgi scripting), some might even enjoy this.
isn't this a rather important feature? certainly it's possible to write utterly incomprehensable code in perl. that's possible in any language. the beauty of perl is the fact that buried in all that potental confusion is a truly powerful and intuitive solution to just about whatever problem one faces. not many languages can claim to be as diverse as perl, and the languages that do encompass the same broad spectrum don't (in my experience) do it nearly as cleanly. *shrug* perl's not for everyone, but it's invaluable to those who don't like learning new syntax every time they face a new problem.
mike