Grenades, chainsaws, tarpits, and newbies

Grenades, chainsaws, tarpits, and newbies

By brian d foy (‎brian d foy‎) from NY.pm
Date: Tuesday, 4 August 2009 11:40
Duration: 40 minutes
Target audience: Beginning Perl
Language:
Tags: beginner dangerous


You might think twice about giving a kid a chainsaw and pointing him at a forest, but not too many people think about giving a beginner a copy of Learning Perl and pointing her at a keyboard. Left alone, both situations can get very ugly really fast. With a little bit of guidance on how to use Perl, newbies don't have to hurt themselves.

This isn't another Perl Best Practices talk or a bunch of Perl syntax; a first week Perl user isn't that far along yet. This is how to think about Perl, or any programming language, even before you get started.


Attended by: Søren Lund (‎slu‎), Patrick Michaud (‎Pm‎), Nicholas Clark, Lech Baczyński (‎lechu‎), Dave Cross (‎davorg‎), Piers Cawley (‎pdcawley‎), Lars Dɪᴇᴄᴋᴏᴡ (‎daxim‎), Damian Conway (‎damian‎), David H. Adler (‎dha‎), H.Merijn Brand (‎Tux‎), Armando Reis (‎AReis‎), MartijnVdS, stigo, Cosimo Streppone (‎cosimo‎), Roberto Henríquez, Jose Neta (‎jpn‎), Oliver Thieke (‎o-thieke‎), Marcos Ramos (‎x‎), Canol Gokel, Sérgio Bernardino (‎smpb‎), Stelios Gikas (‎sgikas‎), Wendy Van Dijk (‎woolfy‎), Rafael Antonio (‎RA‎), Jörg Plate (‎Patterner‎), Aristotle, Sergio Arias, Petru Ratiu (‎rpetre‎), Diogo Antunes, Jordi Delgado (‎jdelgado‎), Tiago Grego, Darius Jokilehto, Cosmin Budrica (‎cosmincx‎), Troels Liebe Bentsen (‎tlbdk‎), Marco Neves (‎themage‎), Hugo Costa, Jozef Kutej (‎jozef‎), Panu Ervamaa (‎pnu‎), Thomas Heine, Hermen Lesscher (‎hermen‎), Francisco Lourenço (‎fml‎), Flavio Poletti (‎polettix‎), Bartosz Jakubski (‎migo‎), Edmund von der Burg (‎evdb‎), Leo Lapworth (‎ranguard‎), Luis Rodrigues (‎goblin‎), Cláudio Valente, Ricardo Vercesi (‎rvercesi‎), Marco Baan (‎pzt‎), Martin Schipany (‎ElCondor‎), Abe Timmerman (‎abeltje‎), Henrique Alves (‎Halves‎), Paul Fenwick (‎pjf‎), Sébastien Aperghis-Tramoni (‎maddingue‎), geira,