Hi all you "been there" guru's.
I'm climbing the learning curve and seeking direction.
A little background then where I'm trying to go:
Pascal, dBase, bash, Visual Basic 3.0 programming experince. This
included little projects without full "life-cycle" development, etc. I don't have a
degree in programming and have never studied beyond the languages (i.e.I
know 0 about "requirements documents", "CASE", etc.) I have taught myself
all I know about programming with very few exceptions. I've been tinkering
around for over 10 years. I've never made a living at programming except
briefly on my first Turbo Pascal programming project and it wasn't much of a
living! My code is far from pro-quality.
I recently decided to learn CGI scripting and chose Perl (after a brief look at
PHP). I liked the way PHP allowed me to embed the code in the HTML and
shortly found EmbPerl and DBI (Thanks Gerald, Doug,Tim and friends!) In
November of last year, I got a RedHat box together and recompiled Perl,
Apache w/ModPerl and Postgres to learn with. I'm brand new to SQL also.
My experience has not included any object oriented programming and I
know very little about it as well.
Progress so far:
My first project is coming to a close. I have learned a bunch but know it is
just scratching the surface. I haven't figured out what $r-> is about at all as
I've done everything in EmbPerl and DBI.
I was a unix email host admin for a couple years, about 6 years ago. It's
coming back to me slowly.
Where I'd like to go:
Perl CGI Guru status. That's where I'd like to go. Specifically on the
Linux/Unix side of things. I don't even know what ASP looks like.
Questions for the group and my first take at answers (_please_ feel free to
throw out my first take at answers if your experience says otherwise. I'm not
trying to answer my own questions here but need solid feedback :-)
I'm aiming at keeping busy and getting good at this over the next year to two
years. By then I expect to be marketable.
What technologies do I need to master (in what order)?
Perl
Apache
Apache API (mod-perl)
SSL?
HTTP?
?
CGI/host security
more UNIX host admin
HTML? Do I need this or can I focus on the back end processing?
XML? I know 0.1 about this.
XHTML? same.
For the above technologies, I don't see much in the way of books, especially
Perl-specific books. Good web sites would be greatly appreciated.
What books do I need to read?
I'm thinking of:
Something to get me further along with Perl:
I've read "Perl and Cgi for the World Wide Web : Visual Quickstart Guide"
by Elizabeth Castro and some of the perldocs.
Object oriented programming and OOP in Perl:
Is Damian Conway's book a good enough intro to OOP for a beginner or do
I need something on OOP before tackling this book.
A good book on SQL.
Good books on system/CGI security
Other good books on other technologies needed.
I have a lot of learning to do. (If anyone knows of any technology where I
can just absorb this stuff in my sleep let me know!:-)
Way on down the road, I'd like to do client/server programming in Perl (that's
why I didn't stay with PHP and other reasons regarding what happens if I
decide to change my database backend and have to rewrite all the database
calls, etc.). Any thoughts on this?
A fairly tall order. If I knew of a college that taught all this, I'd probably
relocate and sign up (and put out my hat for handouts)! :-) Please feel free
to rearrange priorities at any level. Should I go ahead and ignore CGI on
NT? ...any level.
Thanks very much in advance. I have been very impressed with the
helpfulness of this mailing list. I hope this proves to be a good thread for
those watching and those down the road.
Happy Trails!
--
Scott Chapman
Technical Support Specialist
Lund Performance Solutions
[EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Phone: 541-926-3800 www.lund.com
