[ale] Programming Question - Where to Start

[John Wells]

When I started with perl, I bought the camel book
first.  I was fairly new to scripting at the time and
found the camel book to be thorough but confusing at
times.  I then opted to buy the beginner's O'Reilly
book "Learning Perl" (llama) and found it adequate.  I
had read the "Gory Details" section in the camel
book...tried to understand as much as possible...and
then read through the llama book in less than a day. 
The llama book fills in the gaps.

My suggestion would be to learn perl...buy "Code
Complete" ( a microcrap press book, but nonetheless a
great tome of earthy programming wisdom) and
"Programming Pearls"...work on some projects...make
some mistakes...and then decide if you want to pursue
a class or not.  Also, I'd recommend taking
programming courses at a university rather than at one
of the glorified tech *rapid training* centers. 
University courses tend to be more interested in
teaching you something...

John


--- Charles Marcus <CharlesM at Media-Brokers.com> wrote:
> I am ready to admit that I need to acquire some
> basic programming skills,
> and believe that Perl is probably the best place to
> start.
> 
> I have done some very basic high-level
> 'programming', in the form of PAL
> (Paradox App Lang) scripting a long time ago, and
> more recently some
> Filemake Pro scripting, but in no way consider
> myself to be a programmer.  I
> have peeked at some Perl scripts, and am mystified
> by what I see.
> 
> So, my question is, where shouod I start?  Is there
> a good book for absolute
> beginners, that won't assume that I know a bunch of
> stuff that I don't?
> Should I take a class?  Both?  I was planning on
> finding a good book for
> beginners, worky my way through that, then once I
> know enough to be
> dangerous, see if I can find a class.
> 
> Any suggestions would be most appreciated.
> 
> Charles Marcus
> 
> 
> 
> ---
> This message has been sent through the ALE general
> discussion list.
> See http://www.ale.org/mailing-lists.shtml for more
> info. Problems should be 
> sent to listmaster at ale dot org.
> 


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Make a great connection at Yahoo! Personals.
http://personals.yahoo.com

---
This message has been sent through the ALE general discussion list.
See http://www.ale.org/mailing-lists.shtml for more info. Problems should be 
sent to listmaster at ale dot org.