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Perl @ Web Programming
Programming Shed : Programmer Store & Resources |
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Perl Index - Perl Book :
Elements of Programming With Perl
by Andrew L. Johnson Paperback: 350 pages Publisher: Manning Publications Company ISBN: 1884777805; (October 1999) Andrew L. Johnson's new Elements of Programming with Perl is titled in such close proximity to two classic texts, Strunk & White's Elements of Style and Kernighan & Plauger's Elements of Programming Style--as to beg comparison. Best not, and more is the pity. Perl strives to be both a natural language like English and a structured language like C, but Johnson evidently does not see the value in writing a prescriptive book as the other "Elements of" authors have. Rather, he has written a review of basic Perl for the converted and initiated. But just as an inexperienced carver cannot learn good carving practice with neither a Swiss Army knife nor a chain saw, a neophyte coder cannot learn good programming with a tool that has been called the "Swiss army chain saw" of programming languages. Can anyone learn good programming style from Perl at all? Better we should learn style elsewhere and bring what we already know to the notoriously laissez-faire language. Perl was developed by linguistic enthusiasts to model a natural language, viz., an idiom consisting of a redundant vocabulary, syntax, and grammar with flexible rules, learnable by example or trial and error. Awk programmers can convert awk scripts to Perl with a utility, then learn Perl by fathoming the output. But where is the centrality of cold, inflexible logic in the design of supportable code? The essential tension in Perl for programming beginners lies between the natural language aspects of Perl (redundancy and flexibility) and the crucial need for discipline in writing programs. Johnson draws his hoe into this fertile terrain but ends up plowing old ground. He adopts a didactic voice and follows a predictable pedagogical path from programming illiteracy through technical proficiency. He introduces task groups--processing text, lists, input/output, modules, debugging--and stops at introductions to modules and object-oriented code. The book is studded with examples, exercises, tips, and tricks gleaned from years of "speaking Perl," but it avoids being prescriptive, and his casual advice is sometimes disconcerting. He discusses white space in formatting code, but he breezes past error handling. He teaches recursion without warning that it is a support nightmare. Often he hides behind Perl's creed that "there is more than one way to do it" to avoid advocating what the newbies need: one better-than-average way to do it. Johnson cannot be both advocate of Perl and teacher of beginning programming, though he has tried: had his experiment been bolder, it would deserve wider attention within the Perl and computer science communities. --Peter Leopold. Book News, Inc.: Introduces the basic elements of computer programming using the context of the Perl language. Variables, loop control constructs, file input and output, regular expressions, references, nested data structures, string and list processing, modules, debugging, abstract data structures and object-oriented programming are covered. Java Metroplex User Group Web Site: "I found the writing to be extremely interesting. The book covers a broad spectrum of Perl topics.the reader will find himself well-versed in the breadth of Perl. It definitely delivers. If I was to start learning Perl now I would be delighted to make this my first Perl book. It is extremely well-written and informative. I give it my highest recommendation." Nathan Torkington, The Perl Journal: ...the best Perl book for neophytes that I've found. ...Make no bones about it, this book is good. Damn good. Sam Hobbs, The Perl Journal: an extremely ambitious ...book that not only introduces programming and its concepts using Perl but that introduces an orderly software... Ken Bandes, The Perl Journal: Johnson has a gift for notations and diagrams, and his depictions of variables, references, and scope are unusually clear... Ed's Internet Book Reviews: If you are seeking a book to help you learn programming... this would be an excellent place to begin. Customer Reviews Reviewer: markyy3 from Fremont, CA USA I tried "Learning Perl by Randal Schwarz" and got bored after about 5 chapters ; too many cutesy references to 60's cartoons and not enough relevant info. So I turned to this book and finally started learning Perl. The author doesn't assume you have any programming experience at all ; hence the title. A person who has never programmed before could probably get through this book( but not without some effort) but they will be well rewarded.What is really excellent is that the author has a home page where you can post questions, concerns, whatever and he will respond within 24 hours (almost always) with clear, concise answers. For others who come from other languages and need to learn Perl quickly, this is an excellent tutorial and they will be up to speed in no time. I had to learn Perl quickly for a project I was on at work - within 2 weeks after starting this book I was well on the way to writing scripts using regular expressions. This book should be thought of as an initial stepping stone on the path to Perl knowledge , so its not as encyclopedic as say the famous Camel book (Programming Perl). After going through this book, doing the exercises, reading and posting on the authors website, you will be very well prepared for more advanced topics in Perl. After this book, I picked up "Object Oriented Perl by Damian Conway" (from same publishing company) and I had no problem at all thanks to the fine intro this book provided me. Reviewer: B. Digger from USA 'Elements of Programming with Perl' by Andrew Johnson is simply the best introductory Perl book on the market. It is patient in pace and rich in content. Concepts are introduced and explained in error free code. Diagrams are effectively utilized to reinforce understanding. Having read Larry Wall's 'Programming Perl' and Tom Christiansen's 'Learning Perl' I was already acquainted with the basic constructs of the language. However as Perl is my first programming language I lacked the skills necessary to write effective reusable programs. 'Elements of Programming with Perl' early on presented the process of program design, and reinforced good design practice through well-organized code examples presented throughout all of the topical chapters. Each chapter builds on & reinforces topics presented in previous chapters. I often found myself reading about a function I had been introduced to elsewhere, and upon following the book's example code finally discovering it's practical potency. As an example, prior to reading this book I had been capable of sorting lists of hostnames by domain only by inefficiently using a regular expression to copy the domain & pre-pend it to the beginning of the hostname. Then using the default 'sort' function followed by a loop to discard the pre-pended domain. Now I can tailor the sort function to serve my needs efficiently replacing that tangle of code with just three lines. The book is well written with few wasted words and unlike most other authors this one understand & makes an effort to teach users of Active State Perl on Windows platforms as well as those using MacPerl. There are no sections or examples exclusive to Unix. It is refreshing to work through and use examples that are not devoted to system administrative tasks. The chapter on module use demonstrates fetching web pages through code that retrieves stock quote and trade volume information and then graphically charts the data. How much more practical & timely can an example be? The author makes himself available online, responds to questions, patiently reviews code and politely makes suggestions. My tool bag now full, my understanding thorough I highly recommend this book. Reviewer: A reader from Finland Funny how different opinions people may have about a book here. I bought this book having read a number of praising comments and tried to use the book for my needs (elements of Perl and CGI). First, the book gets very, very, very lengthy with the elements (well, the very name of the book is "Elements of...") and it never gets very far beyond a "hello world". Being a programmer I would certainly understand most of the stuff in tenth of the amount of pages. What is Perl most famous for? CGI, you might say. So would I. This book has only 4 (four) pages on CGI programming and ONLY 20 pages about the use of modules! The book does not even mention databases!!!! As it says, it is only about the elements, not the use of the language. No CGI, believe me!!! The index of the book is next to useless. I have searched for several keywords without success and come accross them in the text when quickly scanning for them in various contexts. Is indexing really this hard??? The book has got just about everything wrong for anybody who knows at least a bit about programming and/or is accustomed to using a normal book with a normal index. It may be good for a rookie programmer who reads it page to page from the front cover to the end cover. I am an adult reader and want to have a book with ORGANIZATION of data. If you are planning to write CGI programs, buy ANYTHING but this book. As my budget was limited to one book I had to use the Internet for tutorials which - surprise surprise - covered the same topics in a tenth of the space and included CGI programming stuff as well. Reviewer: Mr. Dietrich from WI, United States This book is a great way to teach yourself Perl and Programming in general. Coming from a background as a dabbler in C and JavaScript, this book was an excellent starting point for my Perl education. I found the 3rd chapter about programming style and procedure to be extremely helpful. I would recommend this book over "Learning Perl, the llama book" because of its clearly written style and real-worldish examples. |
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