February 2012 Archives

Learning Perl Challenges

I'm starting a series of Learning Perl Challenges at www.learning-perl.com, the blog I maintain for Learning Perl. While I was posting about the Student Workbook for Learning Perl, I started thinking about the difference for exercises based on a particular chapter or feature, and capstone exercises that would use anything or everything in the book.

The first challenge is to reimplement /users/brian_d_foy/2012/02/index.html

The Perl Learning Environment

For YAPC::NA, I'm creating a new course called "From Zero to Perl" (although I'll probably actually call it "0..Perl"). JT Smith wants to create not only new Perlers, but new programmers, and he wants to start them with Perl. I'm up for the challenge. However, there are some things that you might have opinions and suggestions on.

The Learning Perl course I teach assumes that you already know how to program, just not in Perl. Some non-programmers do alright, many struggle, and a few outright fail. Most of those have nothing to do with Perl as a language. Programming as a way of thinkin…

What if we could drop archives into @INC?

What if I didn't have to install distributions, but instead just dropped the entire archive into a directory, much like a Java JAR file? I don't have a complete idea for this, but I have enough that I want to have public notes on it.

This is something that I think about when I can't do anything else. I'm on a bus or train in Chicago where any sign of Apple technology will get you jacked (the CTA even has signs telling people to be careful with their iPhones. Not Blackberrys or Samsung, or whatever, just iPhones). There's that time between finishing the in-flight magazine and reaching …

About brian d foy

user-pic I'm the author of Mastering Perl, and the co-author of Learning Perl (6th Edition), Intermediate Perl, Programming Perl (4th Edition) and Effective Perl Programming (2nd Edition).