(Almost) the best introduction to Perl

I own about two dozen Perl books, including the 2nd and 3rd editions of 'Learning Perl'. I'm now buying the 4th edition of 'Learning Perl', and this review is motivated by the negative (level 1) reviews on amazon.com that I just finished reading. I find that the negative reviews on target (more or less) but that they miss the point of 'Learning Perl'.

I recommend 'Learning Perl' to the Perl hacker, the Perl beginner, and the complete beginner, and my recommendation comes without qualification. However, the reader should not expect a perfect book, because the shortcomings identified in the negative reviews exist. This review attempts to answer the most common complaints.

You don't learn a language by reading a book, just as you don't learn to play a musical instrument by reading a book. In both cases, you MUST(!!!) practice, practice, practice. Mastery of the language comes only after many, many hours of struggle (either with the language or with the instrument.)

'Learning Perl' is targeted to those who sit at the keyboard and write code. As such, it doesn't do much for casual readers, or those who want to study the language from an academic standpoint, or for the typical student trying to complete class assignments. This book gives good answers to legitimate questions, but the trick is that the answer won't do a learner any good until he knows what the question is. It takes a good while of writing Perl to know what the questions are ... and only then can one really appreciate this book.

'Learning Perl' is programmer centric, Perl centric, and Unix centric. What I mean is that it gives up its value only to those who are willing to expend effort to mine it. For those willing to work hard, reading and rereading, writing and rewriting, this is a very good book.

Other Reviews

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