[geeks] flamewar question: Perl

[David Cantrell]

On Sun, Jul 22, 2001 at 03:25:45AM -0500, Bill Bradford wrote:
> Okay, I know this is liable to generate a flame war.
> Tis good, we need more activity on the lists anyway.
> 
> Is it worth my time to lern Perl? (er, "learn perl better
> than the little I know it already")?
> 
> (so far, I havent had a *need* to learn it..)

It's only worth learning if you have a need for it.

> I've got all the ORA books (learning perl, programming perl,
> perl cookbook, etc) but have just never been able to get "into"
> any of them - without a driving reason to learn it, I end up
> putting the books down and not getting back into them for a 
> while..

As good as the camel and llama books are, I always find it incredibly
hard to learn a language from a book.  I really need to use the book
alongside working on real code.  I learnt perl by hacking on someone
elses code cos we needed almost the same functionality as what he'd
written.  That got me to the 'perl babytalk' level, where the books
then became useful.

-- 
David Cantrell | david at cantrell.org.uk | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

Do not be afraid of cooking, as your ingredients will know and misbehave
   -- Fergus Henderson