It's also making me remember why I fell in love with Perl in the first place.

So here's an offer to those of you who know C, and are interested in checking out Perl, but don't want to blow fifty bucks on the Camel Book (Programming Perl by Larry Wall et. al, O'Reilly Press) without knowing if you're even going to USE Perl. If there is sufficient interest I'll teach a mini-course on the language.

Things you'll need :

- a working knowledge of C or C++. You don't have to be a C guru, but you should understand the basic control structures (if, for, while, etc.)

- A working copy of the perl interpreter, v.5.04 or better. If you're running Linux, you probably already have one - type 'perl --version' at the shell to see what version you have. Windows users can download it from ActiveState; it's freeware.

- A text editor. Windows users can use Notepad, but I highly recommend TextPad so you can have syntax highlighting.

- If you want to write CGI scripts, you'll need to have access to a Web server that is configured to support them. I can help a bit with Apache; IIS users are on their own unless someone who knows IIS wants to help out...

If you're interested, let me know.

I'd love to learn Perl, but being that I'm the someone just being taught C via email... I guess I'd better wait a while. But I already want to say that after C you gotta teach me Perl.

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Questo è il bacio de Tosca!

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10 PRINT "HOME"
20 PRINT "SWEET"
30 GOTO 10

quote:

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Originally posted by demonk:
Perl kicks some major ass! It's what Java has always wanted to be but failed at

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your post, demonk, is dead-on. I keep hearing that Java is the standard, everyone should use Java, blah blah blah. Java gets a lot more press, but if you look under the hood of most websites, you're a LOT more likely to find Perl than Java Servlets or some other technology du jour.

Look back through history, and you'll find that there have been hundreds of languages that were sure to be the next Big Thing... but it's the ones that spread quietly that stuck around.

Right now all the k1dd1es are rushing to learn Java and Visual Basic. Unlike C or Perl, the languages don't make you spend years mastering the intricacies of good code to write something cool. But they also limit you in ways that Perl and C don't... so if you want to grow, you have to go learn Perl and C anyway, but by that time you're so used to the *GET*RESULTS*NOW* style of coding that Perl and C just seem frustrating and boring and you give up.

I've seen it happen plenty of times

LiNey, sure, I'll teach you Perl... but let's get thru the basics of C first. Learning C forces you to learn the Rules of Good Programming that have stood the test of time.

Perl doesn't enforce the rules because it assumes you already know them. It allows you to write sloppy code if you want. For beginning programmers, this means it will happily allow you to develop very bad programming habits.

For example, C makes you declare all your variables. This makes you keep track of what variable you're using for what purpose. Perl, on the other hand, allows you to pull variable names out of your ass and use them wherever you see fit. Depending on your experience, this can be a blessing or a curse...

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Net Syndrome - www.netsyndrome.net
Catch The Sickness

quote:

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Originally posted by kornalldaway:
question:
is it better to start with perl and then move on to c or the other way around?

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no, most definitely start with C first... as dsl noted.

This message has been edited by Tattered on October 30, 2001 at 05:32 PM

Pascal and C are so similar that you should be able to dive into Perl without a problem. Almost all the differences have to do with syntax :

- begin and end in Pascal are written { and } in C
- Assignment is := in Pascal, = in C
- Comparison in = in Pascal, == in C
- The dereference operator is ^ in Pascal, * in C
- procedures in Pascal are functions with return type void in C
- etc.

Otherwise, the data types are pretty much the same, accessing data is pretty much the same, control structures are almost the same...

This message has been edited by damien_s_lucifer on October 30, 2001 at 06:04 PM

quote:

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Originally posted by: damien_s_lucifer
- If you want to write CGI scripts, you'll need to have access to a Web server that is configured to support them. I can help a bit with Apache; IIS users are on their own unless someone who knows IIS wants to help out...

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I seem to recall that it wasn't that difficult (but it was a LONG time ago). I do, however have access to IIS servers to play around with and figure it out if anyone needs the help.

I went through a fairly logical progression (I think):

Some BASIC (very little)
Pascal
C++
Assembler
Perl
PHP

And for the record, I still maintain (in the face of opposition and stupidity) that HTML is not a programming language. Thank you.

edit: had to edit

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Give me ambiguity or give me something else...

This message has been edited by Beldurin on October 30, 2001 at 06:07 PM