New to Programming

I have had a Linux course and a course on pseudocode, and supposedly had the prerequisites to take a Perl course at the college. The class basically consisted of reading the text and then completing the graded homework. I pick up on patterns very easily, but struggled because the code in the book was just snippets and examples were sorely lacking. In order to see a pattern, I needed to see the code used for an actual purpose, i.e., "find the social security numbers that begin with 547." The book will tell you this is the code and this is what it looks like, but does not give an application piece. With the Internet, it would be great if the authors linked a website to the book which has applicable uses of the code. This could even be as a Wiki, so others could contribute. I read the book 3-4 times and acquired a "knowledge" level of Bloom's taxonomy. If you were to ask me for the command for such and such, I could tell you. However, I can't use the codes in actual situations--which should be the whole point of learning Perl.

Other Reviews

• Excellent intro book to Perl
• Decent content, poor editorial style
• New to Programming
• Great learning book
• (Almost) the best introduction to Perl