Don't get me wrong, I think Perl is great and has it's place, and I know I'm no authority, but I don't consider Perl a good language for new CIS/CS students for a number of reasons including:
It's technically a scripting language, not a programming language. It's "object-oriented" system is an afterthought. Variables are loosely typed. It allows constructs such as routines returning multiple values which are unthinkable in good programming practice. It's cryptic. It has too many special symbols. It makes things that should challenge a beginner too easy and allows things that should not be allowed for beginners. For these reasons it teaches programming practices that can at best be hard to apply to other languages (I don't think anybody writes in just one language) and at worse lead to poor code. So if you take something written in Perl and try to do it in C, it can be a real challenge (though converting from C to Perl can be very easy). If you want to learn good sequential programming practices, maybe start with C. If you can master C you can apply it to many other languages (by contrast, Perl-specific knowledge is hard to apply elsewhere), and Perl will seem easy. If you want to learn object oriented programming practices, probably start with Java. Some of the things that makes it good for learning are that it's interpreted (which means you don't have to worry about "project" issues like compilers, intermediary files, etc.), simple things can be done with ease, it's free and easy to install/use, and it's documented on the web better than many other languages. So if you have no background with computers and couldn't figure out how to install a C compiler or Java IDE/SDK/RTE, Perl might be a good place to start. You will learn so much more by starting with C, installing a compiler, and addressing many of the issues that Perl takes care of for you. If you want to understand existing Perl code, I recommend getting one or more of the O'Reilly Perl books that comes with a CD full of indexed documentation on almost every Perl function. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2002 18:00 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Complete Beginner Looking for Advise! Hi everyone, I'm a complete newbie to perl and programming. I'm a computer science freshman at Cal Poly SLO, and am only in CPE 102 where we are studying the fundamentals of JAVA. However, because I make websites I am very interested in perl, and would like to begin pursueing that language. Are there any web tutorials/references that you have found that are well-written and straight-forward? Also which books would you recommend to someone with limited programming experience and no perl? If you have any other advise or tidbits, like what you wish you had done different when you were learning perl, or if I should learn another language before perl, etc, etc, please let me know. My ultimate goal is to be able to build a classified page for my website to my liking, however that is quite a task and I realize it will be a while before I am able to do that. I want to learn the basics well, and go on from there. I thank you for your advise! Hopefully in the future I'll be able to understand what you guys are talking about. Right now I read it and nod my head and smile! ;) Lisa -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
