T. Bryan wrote:
On Thursday 31 August 2006 18:13, Roy Vestal wrote:
I'm in a position at work where I'm going to need to learn Perl and
Python. Yes, I've been a linux admin for a LONG time and never had to
learn these until now.
I'm looking for recommendations online if possible or in book form.
You could join the local Triangle Zope/Python User Group
(http://www.trizpug.org/) and ask the other members for their favorite books.
We have an active group, and you might want to come out and hang out with
some other Python users. :)
It kind of depends on what style of intro to a language you like. A lot of
people seem to like Dive into Python. There's an online tutorial if you just
want to get a quick overview of basic syntax. I liked O'Reilly's Learning
Python; it wasn't terrific, but it wasn't bad.
---Tom
You've probably made a decision and read half the book by now (yeah, I'm
a bit behind on email), but I'll throw in my two cents in case it
benefits anyone.
T. Bryan's statement couldn't be more true. If you want a classroom
text-book style Perl learning experience, then "Learning Perl" is the
way to go. If you're more of the "give me a reference manual with witty
descriptions and I'll dive in and go" kind of guy, then "Programming
Perl" (the Camel book) is the classic you want. For reference, I fall
into the latter category, so my other recommendation is skewed that
way. For Python, I've recently done the crash course (last year), and I
read a lot of reference material in the process. I went through the
first half a dozen chapters of so of "Programming Python", and it was
*quite* a chore. I don't recommend it. It's a reasonable class
reference, and I've used it for that occasionally, but it's not my first
choice (but it is on my bookshelf at work). I much preferred "Python in
a Nutshell" [1]. I don't typically like the "Nutshell" books, but this
one was a refreshing change. As someone with solid programming
background in other scripting languages, it was just the right amount to
get me up to speed on what I needed to know about Python's general
language conventions, it's object model, what's provided in the standard
modules, etc. It also provides a very handy and thorough reference of
the builtins and the standard modules. It's one of the few books I have
two copies of, one for work and one for home [2].
Best of luck in learning Perl and Python, they're both really useful
skills to have!
Aaron S. Joyner
1 - Friendly disclaimer, I also work with the author of said book (Alex
Martelli, interesting fellow), and was given a copy by my employer,
which is why I started reading it.
2 - Okay, this is just because I work from home too much.
--
TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/
TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/
