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.