Bingo! I agree and I think that's my problem with all of this. I think that the documentation pages can be over a newbie's (myself) head. For example, the Win32 extensions are great and I'm really getting into them but I have problems sometimes getting them to run in my codes. Good advice, also, about the books. Personally, I'm on NT and am moving to Unix or Linux later (after I learn C and Assembly), so I'm using the Learning Perl on Win32. Then I'm going to use the Camel book. Any advice on getting the most out of the 2 Learning Perl books? (or shall I repost this question, i.e., a new thread?) Thanks!
-----Original Message----- From: drieux [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, April 29, 2002 3:27 PM To: Chas Owens Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: B/C - Re: Selftuition On Monday, April 29, 2002, at 11:47 , Chas Owens wrote: [..] >> I hear "Learning Perl" is the best bet for a structured set of >> exercises building in a graduated manner from simple to difficult. >> - -- >> beau [..] > The best advice I can give is read the 3rd Llama (Learning Perl 3rd > edition) cover to cover, read about references and closures in the 3rd > Camel (Programming Perl 3rd edition), and finally choose a pet project > to work on (mine was a Gtk/Gnome SQL editor) reading the 3rd Camel, > perldoc, and Module docs as necessary. Someone has my llama book - and I presume it works for them. The hard trick is teaching folks how to hunt for new information, and evaluate for themselves that it is really worth retaining, which is the critical problem here.... As one of my old coder friends reminds me from time to time "I am a user. The Australian DoD did teach me to code in cOBOL wat back in 1975. At that stage I started to wish for the elegant simplicity of an IBM Sorter/Collator complete with the necessary patch cords. [..] Where have all the old and reliable things they told me about like ALGOL, FORTRAN, FORTH and suchlike gone. I do remember using some odd job control languages too but that's another story. Pardon me is I duck." Many of our current players were not even BORN in '75 - which is clearly frightening to think about... So we just do not have any stable body of knowledge upon which to argue the cases with any sense of 'scientific certainty'..... ciao drieux --- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]