Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 14:44:37 -0700 From: z thompson <cublai@lastamericanempire.com> To: Daniel Frazier <dfrazier@magpage.com> Cc: Nathan Mace <nmace85@yahoo.com>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: how did you get started in Perl programming? Message-ID: <20020201144437.A80227@titus.lastamericanempire.com> In-Reply-To: <3C5B030E.2090201@magpage.com>; from dfrazier@magpage.com on Fri, Feb 01, 2002 at 04:05:18PM -0500 References: <200202010400.XAA05509@uce55.uchaswv.edu> <3C5B030E.2090201@magpage.com>
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* Daniel Frazier <dfrazier@magpage.com> [020201 14:10]: > Nathan Mace wrote: > > > i'm in the process of teaching myself Perl. I have the O-Rielly book > > "learning perl", and i am in the process of reading it, and coding my way > > through it. i'm curious as to how you perl gurus out there got to where you > > are now. any advice you could give to someone looking to get into perl > > programming? thanks > > > > > the best advice I can give is to just dive in and start coding. > working your way thru the book is a great start. after that I'd say > think up a project (nothing too ambitious to start with, it'll be slow > going for a while) and just start coding it in perl. If you have any > (ba)sh scripts you run as cronjobs another good start might be to > convert one (or more) of them to perl scripts. But whatever you do, > the important thing is to start writing (and inevitably start > debugging) code. > Yes, there is no substitute for actually coding when learning a language. Some things you might consider: * Try writing some small scripts to implement commands you wish were present in your shell and throw them in ~/bin. * Think of tedious administration tasks that require multiple steps and automate them. When I learned Perl I had been given several fairly large programs to first maintain and then rewrite. This was invaluable as it allowed me to learn from someone elses work and revise it with an intimate knowledge of its flaws. If you can find a project to be part of (if you don't code perl at work) that would be great. Also, just plain curiosity will go a long way. Regularly browsing through comp.lang.perl.misc will turn up alot of gems. People are always finding new ways to do the most common things. Pull some of the code out of there, throw it in a file, and tinker around with it. Zach Thompson To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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