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Comment by AugieDB | Hacker News Reader

Was introduced to Perl in a programming languages course in college in 1996/1997. Brought it to my first job, where it gained fame there for being the language that took a 12 hour process and ran it in less than a minute. (They had originally been trying to parse a huge log file with Visual Basic, I believe it was. Perl was made for, well, extraction and reporting...)

Been programming in it full time ever since.

Thanks, Larry Wall, Randall Schwartz, Brian Foy, Nat Torkington, Tom Christiansen, Damian Conway, etc. etc.

Count me in as another person introduced to O'Reilly via "Programming Perl." Was "Perl Best Practices" the first such "Best Practices" book?

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One of my favorite Perl books, albeit a bit lesser-known is "Higher Order Perl" by Mark Jason Dominus.

And which is available online at: http://hop.perl.plover.com/book/

Adding a bit of praise for "Programming Perl". (As well as for some of the other books by the fine people you've listed.)

"Programming Perl" is not just (very) informative, it is also engagingly, even entertainingly informative.

(Proof of this is left as an exercise for the reader... ;-)

Sadly, Programming Perl is a bad book for a newbie to read nowadays. http://perl-tutorial.org explains why and suggests newer alternatives. :)

Well, perhaps one can treat my comment as good part fondness/nostalgia.

Although, I clicked through the pop-up link, to find a fairly brief and limited set of points in a short, single critique of the 4th edition.

I don't know... It's been a while, but I still remember "Programming Perl" as providing not just the what but a good dose of "why" and context.

A lot of people who "don't like Perl" don't seem to understand that, where it's coming from, both philosophically and systematically (if that is a word and I can use it here).

"Programming Perl" is not, in my opinion, a beginner text. Randal took care of that contemporaneously with "Learning Perl". But it was, and -- current shortcomings aside -- perhaps still is, a good post-beginner text.

It also remains "timeless" for me, in that it was a good, engaging read. In my opinion, more texts should -- if clever enough to -- dialog with the reader rather than spewing at them.

Anyway, I don't mean to put myself in the position of defending Larry et al.'s tomb in this post-post-modern world. I'm hardly qualified to begin such a task.

But even if it's not currently the best reference, or even recommended as such, I think it may remain a decent example of how to write one.

> I think it may remain a decent example of how to write one.

No contest. I'm just worried that, with many people mentioning the "good old books" (which by now are simply bad), without mentioning the current good ones, more newbies will try to get those old books and learn from them and get themselves and others in a lot of trouble that way.

That's why i comment to explain and point out alternatives.

Well, that's a fair point.

I think I ended up with a (legitimate) ebook of the 4th edition, but I haven't tried it.

Newcomers should understand that Perl is beget of its *NIX heritage. With some understanding of this, it stops being "line noise".

Perl was the language I encountered that "thought the way I do". For those considering, I think this remains a very relevant factor in its continued existence. For what that's worth.

"Programming Perl" was the first computer "textbook" I ever read with a sense of humor. Before that, it had been all dry C books and the like. That's why I liked it so much. Yes, "Learning Perl" would definitely be better. At the time, I wanted both the tutorial AND the reference book, so that's what I got.

"Intermediate Perl" is still awesome for the next level stuff, particularly with all the references and transformations, et. al.

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