More on Perl
I’ve tried learning Python through Mark Pilgrim’s excellent Dive Into Python, but I’ve discovered that I haven’t enough time to really get into it. Perl is the language I use most days, both in work and personally, and it’s hard for me to break out of the Perlish mindset. Any “serious” Python coding would be sysadmin and report stuff, and I’d just try to remake Python in Perl’s image.
I’ve finally grokked Perl references, and I’m reading the second
edition of the Perl Cookbook with real pleasure. Some of the
quirkier passages from the first edition are gone (and Randal Schwartz
seems to be persona non grata in this edition), but that’s
outweighed by the treatment of Perl’s Unicode support (crufty and
gnarly though it may be — the price of backward compatibility) and
the new switch statement. Perl must be the only language older than
10 years where switch is an experimental feature.
Jim has apparently volunteered to become
the Perl expert at his salt mine, for which he deserves equal praise
for foolhardiness and pity. I think that he’ll find enough cool stuff
in Perl to satisfy his C++ roots, what with all the esoterica
available in the dark corners of CPAN
(Acme::Bleach,
anyone? Or how about
Acme::Apache::Werewolf,
by a hardcore Warren Zevon fan?)
I’ll never be a Perl guru, but I do think I can become a competent Perlist.
Posted at 21:56,
in the comp category. Comments [0]
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