On Fri, May 18, 2001 at 12:22:56PM -0400, Stephen P. Potter wrote:
> For example, take a look at Camel1. It was a small book; you could carry
> it around without building up huge biceps. You could reasonable read it in
> a couple of days and get started with perl. I tried to get us to maintain
> that in Camel2, but it grew to almost 700 pages. Camel3 is 1100 pages,
> about a 3 fold increase from Camel1. I can weightlift with it now.
> Someone looking at that is going to think they have to know all that to be
> effective.
"Programming Perl" is a reference manual. It is designed to cover the
whole of the language in detail. It will be large. "Learning Perl"
is the tutorial. It is designed to cover just the basics. It will be
small. Trying to learn Perl from the Camel is like trying to learn
English from the OED.
Trying to make Perl easier to learn by cutting features is about as
sensible as making English easier to learn by tearing pages out of the
OED. The size of the language has little to do with its difficulty,
its more about the minimum subset that must be learned to be useful
(the *actual* subset, not the perceived).
In fact, the Llama 2 (written for 5.004) doesn't cover much of perl5
at all. I don't think it ever mentions OO or references except in
passing. Llama 3 should be much the same.
What you are worried about is not a language issue, it is a perception
and DOCUMENTATION issue. Please stop throwing your wooden shoes in
the cogs of progress and start helping. Go to [EMAIL PROTECTED],
start up a perlsmall man page.
--
Michael G. Schwern <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.pobox.com/~schwern/
Perl6 Quality Assurance <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Kwalitee Is Job One
How can I stoop so low? Years of practise, that's how. It's been hard
going but now I can stoop lower than a pygmy limbo dancer.
-- BOFH
