On Sun, 5 Oct 2003, Iain Truskett wrote:
> * John Von Essen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
> > I agree that learn.perl.org needs some work. It appears to
> > be mainly a portal for buying Perl books from Amazon - of
> > which some sort of commissions are made. Not to mention
> > that almost every book listed is from O'Reilly.
>
> > Does O'Reilly own Perl? Why is it that every perl site so
> > blatantly promotes O'Reilly books? I actually think the
> > O'Reilly books are BAD for beginners.
>
[snipped books]...
> > The fact is I can go to mysql.org or php.net and
> > effectively learn those tools online to a fair degree of
> > proficiency.
>
> Please, produce a list of good, contemporary, online
> tutorials. I took a look at Shlomi's somewhat hideously
> designed site and the list there.
Why do you believe it is "hiseously designed"? Is it the green navigation
bar?
> There's not one tutorial
> there that I could happily endorse.
>
> Check that the tutorial uses good, modern style.
I believe my Perl for Newbies uses that.
> 3-arg open
> (or at least whitespace between action and filename).
Why? If you just want to open a file, you do not care about its mode. Only
if you are very security conscious, then you should.
> Should
> be advocating 'use strict' and 'use warnings' (which will
> show it's at least 5.6 or later).
I introduce use strict at the second lecture, after I introduce "my" and
consistently use it from then on. I believe I mention the -w flag on the
fourth lecture. I do not see a point teaching newbies about my first, and
so "use strict" is pointless. My lectures are aimed even at people without
any programming experience, and they need to be taught some basic things
before I can start talk about "my".
> Should introduce perldoc
> very early on.
I do refer people to the man pages of Perl (using online links).
> Lexical filehandles.
Why is that so important? I hardly use them.
> No ampersands when
> calling functions in the ordinary case.
That's style and hardly a matter of grave importance. And I don't think I
used ampersands much. (many times I do so gvim would highlight them).
> /x both mentioned
> and advocated for regex.
I mentioned it. Note that I only consistently use it when I explictly
need its functionality, so I'm not going to advocate its use every time.
> POD.
Why is POD so important? It isn't, unless you wish to document your
scripts or modules. I don't use POD for most of the things I write, and I
don't expect it to be heavily used by people writing software for internal
use either. (which is at least 90% of the Perl code out there).
> Other stuff. And most
> importantly, security, including common sense and tainting.
>
I did not cover security in great detail, except for several scattered
notes here and there. It may be a useful addition.
> Probably a bit much to expect, but they're usually good
> signs.
>
Are you happy with Simon Cozens' "Beginning Perl" book, which is also
available online?
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Home Page: http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
An apple a day will keep a doctor away. Two apples a day will keep two
doctors away.
Falk Fish
