At 01:14 PM 4/29/02 -0700, drieux wrote: >On Monday, April 29, 2002, at 12:45 , Anthony Beaman wrote: > >>Bingo! I agree and I think that's my problem with all of this. I think >>that the documentation pages can be over a newbie's (myself) head. > >Part of that is understanding what the 'gliphs' are - if you >have no idea what a scalar or a list are - it is hard to grok > > 'list context' or 'scalar context' > >and hence have to 'learn' that some how....
The Perl docs aren't tutorials and don't hold themselves up to be (with the exception of those pages ending in 'tut' - which are fairly narrowly-focussed tutorials. The Perl docs are reference material with a semi-intelligent organization imposed on them. No point attacking them for failing to fulfill promises they don't make. Learning is the province of books like the Llama - because tutoring is in general (a) more subjective and therefore subject to contentious arguments; (b) more voluminous than reference works and (c) harder to do right, this is why you don't find much in the way of tutorials bundled with Perl. I happen to think it's somewhat ambitious to learn a new language from books alone, but that's just me... I prefer an instructor-led class where I can get it but that's not always possible. >>Personally, I'm on NT and am moving to Unix or Linux later (after I learn >>C and Assembly), so I'm using the Learning Perl on Win32. > >May I recommend that if you have no really pressing need to >understand the gory details of how bits are flipped in any >given specific CPU that you avoid the 'assembler' portion. It depends. IMHO everyone should learn at least one assembler so they have an idea of how CPUs think... makes it easier to understand how a higher-level language like C works and why it was designed the way it was. *Kinda* like learning Latin makes it easier to learn other languages that were derived from it. Again, YMMV. -- Peter Scott Pacific Systems Design Technologies http://www.perldebugged.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
