Opinion from a newbie...
You have already got many helpful replies from the mongers, but I would
like to add another comment from a newbie's point of view. I do not have
any formal education as a programmer, and I took one class for C++ and
another class for Java at a local college. That's all the "formal"
computer class that I took. I became interested in learning Perl, and
was looking for a class in some college, but I couldn't find any.
So, I started learning Perl myself by reading some web pages. The most
helpful pages to me was http://www.kent-web.com/perl/ (yes, this page is
in Japanese since that's my native language), but I believe there are
tons of web site like this which teaches you about entry level Perl.
It's a matter of finding one that works for you the best. Then as I got
some basic knowledge of what each code described in the above web site
can do, I started reading the camel book at the same time. The first
chapter of the camel book discusses one small Perl program. The author
uses this small program as an example, and explains Perl coding. This
first chapter may help you a lot about learning Perl. At least, it did
to me.
After reading the book, I still didn't have much confidence in my
programming skills, and I posted a similar question as you did to this
mailing list. One of the mongers replied to me privately, and he gave me
this advice "get an ambitious project, and just write the codes for it.
Make mistakes and fix them. You will learn a lot by making mistakes." In
my opinion, this advice is something that I would always keep in my
mind. You can learn Perl by reading books. You can learn Perl by taking
a class. But unless you write Perl codes, your knowledge/skills would
not advance. As other mongers replied to you already, "Just do it."
I am getting more and more interested in Perl as I learn the language. I
found Perl is a very powerful programming language and easier to learn
than C++. My profession is not Perl programmer. I just use Perl to make
some of my tasks more efficient by automating them. Now I'm hooked on
Perl and want to be a full-time Perl programmer. I'm spending more time
at the office now writing codes when I have down time. You will see how
Perl can be flexible in executing tasks that you never thought would be
possible. I even didn't know until recently that Perl can manipulate MS
Excel files by using some packages. Perl just blew my mind :-)
Good luck.
Hideki
(2010年05月06日 21:32), boston-pm-requ...@mail.pm.org wrote:
Date: Thu, 06 May 2010 16:16:27 -0400
From: Laura Bethard<betha...@nber.org>
Subject: [Boston.pm] Newbie question
To:boston-pm@mail.pm.org
Message-ID:<201005062016.o46kgaqu065...@mail2.nber.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
Hi all,
With apologies - I'm a pastry chef turned publishing admin turned
database admin. I have no formal computer training, but I taught
myself to use MySQL and Unix as part of my current position. Now the
IT department would like me to be able to write Perl scripts and web
front-ends for the database. I don't know a thing about Perl and am
somewhat intimidated by it. It seems like I could do a lot more
damage just aimlessly messing with it. I was looking for an
extension class but am having trouble finding something in the price
range my company will cover. IEEE had a promising class but it was
cancelled, and the only other two I could find were:
http://www.open-source-training-courses.com/Courses/Perl-Scripting-Classes.htm
http://www.open-source-training-courses.com/Courses/Perl-Programming-CGI-Scripting.htm
I'm not sure if the 3-day will cover what I need to know, and the
5-day is pricey. I'd prefer a traditional class over an online one,
but might consider online with a solid recommendation. Anyone have any advice?
Thanks in advance!
Laura Bethard
Publications/Working Papers
National Bureau of Economic Research
Cambridge, MA 02138
(617) 588-1403
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