Top 10 perl books

[Paul Johnson]

On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 03:08:38PM +0200, Abigail wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 10:24:41AM +0100, Frazer Irving wrote:
> > I don't know if it's still in print but Mastering algorithms with Perl is a
> > good read.
> 
> 
> I'd rank that as one of the poorest Perl books ever.

I'd have to disagree with that.  Or more accurately, I don't think it is
a poor book at all.  On the contrary, I did and still do enjoy reading
it.  But I suppose it depends on what you are looking to get out of the
book.

> In the beginning it wonders why noone had written an algorithms books
> using Perl, and then spends the rest of the book proving why not using
> Perl is a indeed a very good idea.

I'll agree that most of the times you'll want to use most of the
algorithms in the book you'll probably not want to be implementing them
in Perl.  But for me that's not the point.  I know perl and I (used to)
know (some) algorithms.  When I want to know more about algorithms
(which, unfortunately, is not as often as I would like) I find it very
convenient to be able to look at real code that I can understand.  I
also like this about HOP.

But I realise that you were fairly closely involved in the production of
the book and obviously have considered reasons for your opinion.  As I
said, I suppose it depends on what you are looking to get out of the
book.

-- 
Paul Johnson - paul at pjcj.net
http://www.pjcj.net