On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 11:35 AM, Simon Forster <simon-li...@ldml.com>wrote:
>
> On 25 Mar 2009, at 18:23, David Ihnen wrote:
>
> They've also told me that they know that perl is harder to learn than PHP.
>>> What can I tell them? That it is not true?
>>>
>> Yes, but you may or may not be right. We all agree that coming into perl
>> is confusing - too much old data about how to do things is out there in the
>> world. That makes it harder to learn - not because the language is harder
>> to learn - but because its not clear what the proper way to learn it is.
>>
>
> And what is the proper way? I've futzed about in a number or languages -
> including perl - but only at a very basic level with perl. I've got some web
> stuff to do and thought that having a go with perl may be a pleasant
> diversion. At the moment it looks like I'll be using Catalyst and Mason to
> help with the job - but what are the pratfalls to avoid - or the good
> practice to follow (use strict and warnings :-)
>
> As an outsider, perl is its own worst enemy. Its proud boast is that
> there's more than one way of doing things (so show me a language where
> that's not true) while not really showing a good way. I accept that a chunk
> of this is style / taste / choice but a few pointers along the lines of
> "that way the road is quite straight and smooth" would help quite a lot.
>
> I guess I'm asking for a magic formula which doesn't exist and that I
> should just bloody well get on and do it but I'll ask anyway.
>
> TIA
>
> Simon
>
"The Perl Cookbook" will likely as not point you at the smoother parts of
the road.
"Perl Best Practices" by Damian Conway goes into the "right" way to do
perl-ish things in great depth.
PerlCritic is a perl module inspired by the book that will check your code
against a configured policy set.
A great place to start is the Camel book ("Programming Perl" - Wall et al)
which has sections on style, newbie pitfalls etc
Try "Perl Hacks" for a more sideways glance.
It is a rich, flexible, language that has been around a good while. In a
good few years at this game I have not come across another that gets you
from here to there in so few steps.
