Reviews for Sams Teach Yourself Perl in 24 Hours

1. Easily the best introduction to Perl

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, January 12th, 2006

   Perl is without doubt one of the most complex languages in wide use today - even C++ arguably seems simple in comparison, while Java, C#, Python, etc are a snap. In the past there has been a strong tendency for writers of introductory books to deal with this complexity by leaving important features out. Worse, for marketing reasons they often don't tell readers they have done this.

   This makes writing much easier, but can mean readers can finish books as bad or even dangerous programmers. (For instance if you learned Perl from Randall Schwartz's "Learning Perl", you not only wouldn't be able to write a function that could add two lists of numbers, but you wouldn't know that you didn't know this, and wouldn't know what was going on when you tried..)

   By comparison, this text (part of a series editted by the legendary Scott Meyers, author of "Effective C++") is exemplary. It is both thorough and clear, giving crystal clear explanations of all Perl's major features, including arguably the best introduction to regular expressions anywhere, and covering superbly the essential but tricky subject of references (one of the things introductions often drop).

   While thorough enough to suit the professional programmer, TYP24H is also clear and friendly enough to be used as in an introduction to Perl by first time programmers.

   A truly superb achievement - I'm horribly envious!

2. Dull Dull Dull

   Rated 2 out of 5 stars, January 12nd, 2004

   Given that this book is supposed to be for complete newbies to Perl this book goes into far too much detail and does nothing to encourage the reader to persevere with it. I've read technical books in the past that have had me up into the early hours playing with my new skills but this book just left me immediately looking for distractions. I'm sure that Perl is a fine language but this book has left me with a bad impression of it. I gave up at chapter 15 and sold it.

3. Perl wasn't built in a day

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, December 12rd, 2002

   Phew! Finished it at last! You'd have to be seriously dedicated to work through the 24 chapters in this book at the rate of one hour each, even averaging over the whole thing. But it *is* good, and by the end I felt I'd got a fair grounding in the basics of Perl. At the end, though, it feels like you've run into a cliff - the last couple of chapters dealing with interactive templates are enough to boggle this mind at least. And with an earlier chapter skipping over the whole area of Perl objects, it left me only too conscious of how much I still don't know (and that includes the last two chapters!). Never mind, the rest of it's good stuff, and enough to get you happily scripting away in Perl.

4. A great beginner's title

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, September 12th, 2002

   SAMS TY Perl in 24 Hours was the first book I'd ever read on Perl. I found it extremely helpful, especially the chapter on regular expressions. This is a great book for programmers or non-programmers, as the learning curve is just right. Although this book doesn't cover some of the new aspects of Perl 5.8, it is still a good resource. I have programmed in Visual Basic, C and Java and I've finally found the language right for me - Perl.

5. Really good intro to Perl

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, June 12th, 2002

   Having read loads of Perl books including "Programming Perl" etc I reckon this is the best one to start with.

   Combined with the O'Reilly "Learning Perl" these are the two to begin with, and maybe all you need.

   Then and only then maybe buy something like the excellent "Perl Cookbook".

   There are too many huge chunky Perl books kicking about these days and they are mostly a waste of space and money.

   There are only a few books worth buying and TY Perl in 24 Hours is one of them, and it has a CD with Perl on it too.