What constitutes effective Perl training for non-Perl developers? [closed]

Answer 1

as others said:

use strict;
use warnings;

maybe

use diagnostics;

for Java programmers:

use autodie; #or Fatal

English.pm
Moose/Mouse
Perl::Critic
perltidy

Answer 2

I can only add, that somebody coming from a less expressive languages might not understand hash expressions or hash and array slice expressions. Seems like every language has a PCRE library these days.

Oh, and to add to moritz idea, I tutored my co-workers on just that.

Plus, I included some instruction on Data::Dumper, Scalar::Util, List::Util and some very useful modules like that.

And why not for that matter, check out Damian's Perl Best Practices and snag a few of the more powerful suggestions.

Answer 3

Ok. Sure you need to use strict at some point. And sure you want to use libraries at some point. But strict is just the basic start-the-file-magic for Perl, and each language has libraries. I don't think those are the things which are very important to learn when starting out.

When you start out in Perl, but already know other languages, you need to know crazy idiosyncracies, like $a and $b being special vars, being able to index using -1, etc.

In retrospect, I really like how I learned Perl: By playing Perl Golf.

By using a language to such an extreme, you force yourself to find out all the crazy bits of it, and you really need to understand the different constructs. Especially if you are doing this with a group of friend/colleagues/... this works really well.

(of course this should not be the only training ;) but I really believe it works very well at some point)

Answer 4

Probably not exactly what you are looking for. Apologies in advance.

I would not point to similarities unless it is really necessary.
Perl works in its own world. You could program Perl in Java style if you like, but what's the point?

The most important lesson I've learned from Perl (and my Perl tutors) is "There Is More Than One Way To Do It". So I think the best way of learning Perl is embracing its attitude to programming and supporting each programmer as he or she finds his or her way.

The examples you are making, list functions etc., are things that come naturally with use -- you can only understand their power once you get the Perl "way of things".

Just my two cents.

Answer 5

I was just hired into this exact scenario. I am a C++ and Java developer and had never touched Perl until my current job. The things that took some time to get used too were the idiosyncratic Perl syntax choices [$_], $this = that unless ... , and seeing the forest for the trees (anything containing /^#+\d/ elements). Other things were just a result of the programming house I work in [confusing OO statements, $self, and putting 1; at the end of module files].

Now that I have been here a while, I see the elements of style that Perl has given me even in my non-work projects. You approach tasks, especially data massaging, differently and it feels like a real solid tool in my toolbox.

All that being said, I was handed a codebase of around 35,000 lines, the camel book and told I could not use CPAN. It has been a productive six months. ^^

Answer 6

Just joking, but whatever you do, show things like this LAST! ;)

use integer;@A=split//,<>;sub R{for$i(0..80){next if$A[$i];my%t=map{$_/9
==$i/9||$_%9==$i%9||$_/27==$i/27&&$_%9/3==$i%9/3?$A[$_]:0=>1}0..80;R($A[
$i]=$_)for grep{!$t{$_}}1..9;return$A[$i]=0}die@A}R