[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Lucia Liljegren) wrote:
>I think the inquiry came from someone who was just starting to teach
>themselves Perl. When I started to teach myself, I used "Learning
>Perl" by Schwartz and Christiansen. At the time, I also bought a copy
>"Programming Perl" by Wall, Christiansen and Schwartz. I learned
>that when one knows nothing, "Programming Perl" is a relatively
>useless book. Learning Perl is wonderful.
I like Learning Perl too, but I've actually found it useless for
absolute beginners. I've taught a couple of courses to high schoolers
who had no programming experience, and we always needed to start way way
before the point Learning Perl starts at. For instance, many people
don't know what variables are for, and simple statements like "$x = 7"
aren't as obvious to absolute beginners as you might suspect. It
encodes some subtle relationships about time relationships, assertions
vs. imperatives vs. queries, and so on.
Interestingly enough, "Elements of Programming With Perl" hasn't worked
very well either, because it tries to teach general programming practice
issues alongside beginning Perl techniques. I've found the students
unready to deal with the former until they have more knowledge of the
latter.
Typically I've just put together my own handouts and lectured on basic
topics as we get to them. Once in a while I draw examples from the
books, but those are easy enough to think of without the books anyway.
What would really be great is to have a real textbook for a course like
this, but that's probably pie in the sky. I'm not sure whether the
publishers would perceive a need for such a textbook.
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Ken Williams Last Bastion of Euclidity
[EMAIL PROTECTED] The Math Forum
