Effective Perl programming

What Hacker News says

1. Patrick_DevineJan 2014
   The book that really helped me out the most with Perl was "Effective Perl Programming" (aka "Silver Ball" due to the original cover). Here's a link: http://www.amazon.com/Effective-Perl-Programming-Idiomatic-D...

   The thing I liked most about that book was that it really helped me get a grasp on Perl idioms and start writing decent, readable Perl code. The thing you'll find out quickly about Perl is that it can be much easier to write than it is to read. I've written more than my fair share of Perl code which I've let rot for a while, tried coming back and reading and been left scratching my head.

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2. cafardDec 2011
   Perhaps best, certainly most depressing (and 20 pages or so to go, but there's time left yet): Bloodlands, by Timothy Snyder, http://www.powells.com/s?kw=bloodlands

   Very good, long: China Marches West: The Quing Conquest of Central Eurasia by Peter C. Perdue, http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780674057432-0

   Odd, interesting, relatively short: Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues by George Berkeley, http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780674057432-0

   Techie: Effective Perl Programming by Joseph Hall, http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780321496942-0

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3. hercyniumOct 2011
   Two excellent books I can recommend for someone working with legacy Perl:

   Perl Medic (Peter J. Scott) - http://amzn.com/0201795264 Effective Perl Programming (Joseph N. Hall, Joshua A. McAdams, brian d foy) - http://amzn.com/0321496949

   Besides those, having a good reference to the language is also essential. For example, I keep Perl In a Nutshell close by, even though I almost always just search http://perldoc.perl.org/ when I need that info.

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4. mapgrepJun 2011
   I really enjoyed O'Reilly's compact "Up and Running with Rails," which I bought because I could never remember the basics after two reads through the default (monster) rails book, "Agile Web Development with Rails."

   Sadly, O'Reilly appears to have lost interest in this series; the Rails book dates to 2006 and is too far behind now to recommend. Look no farther than the #2 rated Amazon review ("28 of 29 people found the following review helpful") to find out why: "Given that this book is only 127 pages long without the Appendix, it's a pretty pricey little item.... a $29.99 retail price seems exorbitant... this little book would make a great introduction to a more comprehensive book on Rails. Stand-alone, it feels like a rip-off."

   I was also going to recommend "Effective Perl Programming" -- but now I see that the second edition has been bulked up to 500 pages from the original ~200. Ugh.

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5. scalywebOct 2010
   I've been working with Perl on and off since 1997 and similar to many I've been disgusted by some of the code I've come across created during that time. Perl has come a long way even since version 5.0.0 and is quite a different character these days. The problem I've had with recommending the language is that unlike C which really hasn't changed(at least to me), Perl has slowly evolved but many of the books in print still point to the older version. While Perl is excellent in maintaining backward-compatibility with earlier versions, knowing and learning the "modern" versions has been a more painful task then it should be. I think this book changes that.

   I just spent about 30 minutes skimming through it. It's only 260 pages in clear and articulate English. Should this be THE new Perl book? Could be...I think this coupled with Effective Perl Programming that came out a few months ago are great for getting onboard or returning to the world of Perl. Hats off to you Chromatic for your work on this.

   There may not be any reasons to learn Perl if you already know Ruby/Python/Tcl/Lua but you certainly won't be worse for it if you do. At the end of the day, it's just another tool and I love having access to so many great ones these days.

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6. hiram112Apr 2018
   It's dusty, but I can't throw it away.

   Effective Perl Programming.*

   A long time ago, when I was a college kid with tons of free time, I'd sit for hours at Borders* or Barnes & Noble and just read computer books. God bless those employees for never kicking a 20-something poor kid out who lived on free coffee refills, yet never bought books.

   At the time, Perl was more significant. Something about its syntax made sense, even though nowadays I cringe at it. Though Python is worse, in a different way...

   A decade later, and I still sometimes need to spit out the results of a bunch of commands, iterate through them with some regex, format it, etc. Perl became the internet's 'duct-tape' for a reason.

   [1] https://www.amazon.com/Effective-Perl-Programming-Idiomatic-...

   [2] https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/borders-files-for-ba...

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