An excellent source of information on a moving target

If you are just curious about Perl 6 and Parrot, this is a good book. If you are planning on diving into the language and want to know some complex internals, this is a good book. In fact, either way you slice it, it is pretty darn good. The only caveat is that this is not a tutorial style book and probably does not completely cover the Perl 6 language. This of course is clearly stated in the book itself since this book was published before the release date of a perl implementation of Perl 6 was even decided upon.

But now that date looks like it is over the horizon. There is chatter on the wires that 'Rakudo Star' will be released in April-ish 2010. This most likely will be the first release of perl 6. The question then is; is this book relevant? And the answer is unequivocally yes. It gives you a lot of information on Perl 6 syntax and features and provides a pretty through overview of Parrot.

It is a densely packed book, a lot like K & R's book on C. But it is readable and usable even as reference. Well worth buying.

Other Reviews

• An excellent source of information on a moving target
• Good reading in many ways for many users
• Serious Perl programmers only
• Parrot ~ .NET ?!