Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Excellent!
Comment: This is one of the easiest books I've ever seen, you'll learn a lot without much effort. There are exercises at the end of each chapter and all the solutions at the end of the book, the exercises are not hard yet I find them very very useful. I'm still not done reading it and I already write Perl code that makes my job a lot easier. Also there are plenty of funny jokes. Get it now!
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Potentially good book, but too wordy.
Comment: This book should be half as thin. It is full of vain attempts to be funny, vague irritating forward references, and references to other programming languages that are not helpful for people who know them and unnecessarily intimidating for those who don't. The authors have good information to give, but I had to get through too much extra writing to get to the point. This is my first and only Perl book, so I don't know how much better other Perl books are. I'm not a professional programmar, but I have some experience using Unix and C/C++. If you're comfortable with Unix shell (but not necessarily an expert) and any basic programming, maybe you'll be better off with some more advanced book. This book can be childish and boring.
Customer Rating:
Summary: craptacular
Comment: Most of the answers to the exercises in Appendix A don't even compile, much less work. I admit I'm not a great code writer, but at some point you need the answer, otherwise you can sit in front of your screen all day writing code that doesn't work or compile. I can do that without the help of this book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good even for a non-programmer
Comment: I am a network geek by day but occasionally need to do some programming to support my work. I do a lot of reporting work and Perl was the best language to do what I need.
I bought this book and was able to start programming in no time. I really liked the examples and was able to change them to do what I wanted pretty easily. I recommend this to anyone who needs to do scripted work quickly!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Juvenile
Comment: Un-arguably the most irritating book I have ever read in order to learn a new language (I have lost count how many I have read in the last 25 years). While I now love Perl, I do so despite having started with this book. The authors attempt to play the "my way is SO superior " approach by filling the text with derogatory references to other languages, while at the same time writing with that condescending "for Dummies" approach. The book frequently teases the reader with un-referenced mentions of knowledge to be revealed in later chapters -- we'd apparently be too confused if the information were to be related now, let alone referenced -- so that an experienced programmer is frustrated by having to search through the text to find out how commas are "used for a more-important purpose", or "we'll see later there are other kinds of quoting". That, combined with the obligatory cult-of-personality type homage to their exalted ruler Larry Wall who is referred to by the authors on a first-name-basis in the all-too-frequent footnotes take this book decidedly off my list of recommendations.
|
|
|
