reviews/perl_for_website.xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<page title="Perl For Web Site Management" keywords="">
<item>
<p>Author: John Callender</p>
<p>ISBN: <isbn>1-56592-647-1</isbn></p>
<p>Publisher: O'Reilly</p>
<p>Reviewed by: Dave Cross</p>
</item><item>
<p>
First things first. This isn't the book that I thought it
was going to be. I was expecting to read a book that
taught experienced programmers some Perl tricks that made
it easier to manage a web site - something like a companion piece to O'Reilly's Perl for System Administration by
David Blank-Edelman. Turns out that's not what this book
is at all.
</p><p>
Instead, it's an introduction to Perl for someone who runs
a web site and decides that they need to take their computer
knowledge to the next level and learn some programming skills. Callender calls these people "accidental programmers"
and he is very understanding of their needs having been one himself only a few years ago.
</p><p>
So immediately this book has a completely different target
audience to the majority of O'Reilly's Perl books. It's
competing against all the brightly coloured books with
titles like "Perl for Morons" or Learn Perl in 30 Seconds.
These books are, almost without exception, written by people with minimal Perl knowledge,
so it should come as no
surprise that Callender's book is vastly superior to all
of them.
</p><p>
The first major advantage that this book has is that it
doesn't simply try to sell Perl as "the CGI language".
Callender is at pains to point out that Perl can be useful
for any number of other tasks involved in running a web
site. Very early on we are looking at updating the links
in an HTML file using regular expressions (and there's
even a discussion on the fragility of this approach and
pointers to better solutions using CPAN modules). A little
later on we are looking at writing reports on web site
hits by parsing the access logs. This is the kind of work
that Perl excels at - the fact that you can you use the
same language to write CGI programs as well should be seen
as a bonus.
</p><p>
As I mentioned before, Callender is not a programmer by
training (this is sometimes obvious from his code exam-
ples) but he has obviously learned from good sources. He
encourages all the good habits that are missing from most
of his competitors books - all of his examples use "-w"
and "use strict" and all of CGI programs are written using
CGI.pm. There's even a far more detailed explaination of
the importance of security and taint mode than I've seen
in any book aimed at this audience. Another bonus is the
discussion of the necessity and mechanics of file locking.
</p><p>
Another topic that often missing from beginners books is
the huge library of ready-written Perl modules called the
CPAN. Many authors seem to think that this concept is
beyond their audience and thereby many newcomers to Perl
never discover this treasure chest and spend their entire
programming life studiously reinventing wheels unnecessarily.
Callender has no time for this point of view and in
the middle of chapter 11 he has us downloading and
installing modules from CPAN. This approach is bound to
lead to more productive Perl programmers.
</p><p>
I mentioned that Callender was himself an accidental programmer.
This means that the chapters are full of anecdotes of the kind of problems he experienced when first
starting to program in Perl. As well as learning about
programming in general, Perl and CGI, most of the book's
target audience will be Windows or Mac users who have no
knowledge of Unix and, in most cases, that's the operating
system that their web server will be running on. Once
again, Callender has already made this journey and he
proves to be a most able guide.
</p><p>
So, all in all, I think this is a great book. If you're
thinking that you need to learn some Perl in order to add
CGI programs to your web site, then please consider this
book before any of the other beginners Perl and CGI books.
You'll end up with a much better understanding after reading this book. But this leads me to my only problem with
the book. I'm really not convinced that the people who
are in the target audience will pick up this book when
they are browsing in a bookstore. I think that O'Reilly
books are seen as being for experts and I also think that
the title doesn't explain the contents of the book very
well.
</p><p>
I could, of course, be wrong. I hope I am.
</p>
</item>
</page>
reviews/perl_for_website.xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<page title="Perl For Web Site Management" keywords="">
<item>
<p>Author: John Callender</p>
<p>ISBN: <isbn>1-56592-647-1</isbn></p>
<p>Publisher: O'Reilly</p>
<p>Reviewed by: Dave Cross</p>
</item><item>
<p>
First things first. This isn't the book that I thought it
was going to be. I was expecting to read a book that
taught experienced programmers some Perl tricks that made
it easier to manage a web site - something like a companion piece to O'Reilly's Perl for System Administration by
David Blank-Edelman. Turns out that's not what this book
is at all.
</p><p>
Instead, it's an introduction to Perl for someone who runs
a web site and decides that they need to take their computer
knowledge to the next level and learn some programming skills. Callender calls these people "accidental programmers"
and he is very understanding of their needs having been one himself only a few years ago.
</p><p>
So immediately this book has a completely different target
audience to the majority of O'Reilly's Perl books. It's
competing against all the brightly coloured books with
titles like "Perl for Morons" or Learn Perl in 30 Seconds.
These books are, almost without exception, written by people with minimal Perl knowledge,
so it should come as no
surprise that Callender's book is vastly superior to all
of them.
</p><p>
The first major advantage that this book has is that it
doesn't simply try to sell Perl as "the CGI language".
Callender is at pains to point out that Perl can be useful
for any number of other tasks involved in running a web
site. Very early on we are looking at updating the links
in an HTML file using regular expressions (and there's
even a discussion on the fragility of this approach and
pointers to better solutions using CPAN modules). A little
later on we are looking at writing reports on web site
hits by parsing the access logs. This is the kind of work
that Perl excels at - the fact that you can you use the
same language to write CGI programs as well should be seen
as a bonus.
</p><p>
As I mentioned before, Callender is not a programmer by
training (this is sometimes obvious from his code exam-
ples) but he has obviously learned from good sources. He
encourages all the good habits that are missing from most
of his competitors books - all of his examples use "-w"
and "use strict" and all of CGI programs are written using
CGI.pm. There's even a far more detailed explaination of
the importance of security and taint mode than I've seen
in any book aimed at this audience. Another bonus is the
discussion of the necessity and mechanics of file locking.
</p><p>
Another topic that often missing from beginners books is
the huge library of ready-written Perl modules called the
CPAN. Many authors seem to think that this concept is
beyond their audience and thereby many newcomers to Perl
never discover this treasure chest and spend their entire
programming life studiously reinventing wheels unnecessarily.
Callender has no time for this point of view and in
the middle of chapter 11 he has us downloading and
installing modules from CPAN. This approach is bound to
lead to more productive Perl programmers.
</p><p>
I mentioned that Callender was himself an accidental programmer.
This means that the chapters are full of anecdotes of the kind of problems he experienced when first
starting to program in Perl. As well as learning about
programming in general, Perl and CGI, most of the book's
target audience will be Windows or Mac users who have no
knowledge of Unix and, in most cases, that's the operating
system that their web server will be running on. Once
again, Callender has already made this journey and he
proves to be a most able guide.
</p><p>
So, all in all, I think this is a great book. If you're
thinking that you need to learn some Perl in order to add
CGI programs to your web site, then please consider this
book before any of the other beginners Perl and CGI books.
You'll end up with a much better understanding after reading this book. But this leads me to my only problem with
the book. I'm really not convinced that the people who
are in the target audience will pick up this book when
they are browsing in a bookstore. I think that O'Reilly
books are seen as being for experts and I also think that
the title doesn't explain the contents of the book very
well.
</p><p>
I could, of course, be wrong. I hope I am.
</p>
</item>
</page>