Higher-Order Perl
This eagerly awaited book by one of the best-known Perl developers summarizes years of innovative practice Most Perl programmers were originally trained as C and Unix programmers, so the Perl programs that they write bear a strong resemblance to C programs. However, Perl incorporates many features that have their roots in other languages such as Lisp. These advanced features are not well understood and are rarely used by most Perl programmers, but they are very powerful. They can automate tasks in everyday programming that are difficult to solve in any other way. One of the most powerful of these techniques is writing functions that manufacture or modify other functions. For example, instead of writing ten similar functions, a programmer can write a general pattern or framework that can then create the functions as needed according to the pattern. For several years Mark Jason Dominus has worked to apply functional programming techniques to Perl. Now Mark brings these flexible programming methods that he has successfully taught in numerous tutorials and training sessions to a wider audience.
Stats for nerds
74recommend
122mentions
91people
2007–2026years
84% recommend16% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- One of the books that most affected my understanding, ability, and joy of programming was Mark Jason Dominus' "Higher Order Perl."
So I love reduce, and have for many years.
- His book Higher-Order Perl was really good and introduced me to some interesting programming concepts, but it also helped me realize why no one uses Perl anymore
- After being discouraged by the ever looming "threat of AI" in programming, I took up some older books. If you didn't get it, I highly recommend "higher order perl" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher-Order_Perl
That book has some of the coolest programming techniques. Even if not all of them are applicable everywhere, truly a good refresher. I don't know perl but write the examples and follow along in JS. Great stuff.
- BTW, the author "mjd" is the author of the excellent book "Higher-Order Perl" which is available online at https://hop.perl.plover.com/book/
- Keep Higher Order Perl for later. It's great but far too much for a 2nd book when getting started. The camel book Programming Perl is still a great start which adheres to the layered aspect. Don't read all of it, just a few parts as needed. I recommend to add Perl Cookbook early, to look things up as you go - it gives idiomatic-ish ideas of how you might do X in Perl. Perl comes with a mountain of very complete and useful man pages: you start with looking things up in the camel book, then transition to looking them up in the man pages.
- Higher Order Perl is such a gem, one of the best programming books in general.
