New Beginning Perl book

So, I've been awfully quiet lately. There are a number of reasons for that, not the least of which is being the proud parent of a delightful little girl. Another reason has been simple: I'm writing a book.

I've signed a contract with Wrox to write a new Beginning Perl book and I'm sad to say that they've already rejected my subtitle. Apparently, "Get a job, hippy" was a wee bit provocative.

In writing up marketing materials for them, I've included a few other points which I suspect may be rejected:

  • Development professionals, hobbyists, and alcoholics have abused Perl for over 20 years.
  • Unlike other beginning Perl books, this one is new!
  • Perl is the official programming language of R'lyeh.

Sadly, while I have lots of fun with this and try to slip in a few things like this into the text, it's hard work always coming up with "fun" things to write. If I had the time, I'd write "Ovid's Pungent Guide to Perl", but rather than have people ask "Why?", I simply confess that I don't have the time and the book won't always have the level of WTF that I like to have in my favorite writing.

The theme of the book, beyond "Beginning Perl", really is "get a job, hippy". It's not "Modern Perl", "Learning Perl", or anything like that. It's focusing on my decade+ level of experience working with Perl in a variety of shops and focusing very, very heavily on making sure that you have the basic skills shops are actually looking for. This means, for example, that while I'll touch on Catalyst, DBIx::Class and other great modules, I'll focus more heavily on ubiquitous tools like DBI, Template Toolkit and other modules which I find to be far more common. The only major exception is a full introductory chapter on Moose as that's rapidly become the de facto standard for Perl.

I'll ignore things like formats, pack, unpack, etc. (though a constant theme of the book is "here's where to look this up in the Perl documentation") because while I see these in Perl code in the wild, I don't see them often enough to warrant them squeezing aside testing, working with the Web, or a variety of other things that you're far more likely to encounter. In short, I want people to understand code in the wild and to look up the obscure bits.

And that brings us to the controversial issue. I mean the really controversial issue. The book is for the developer who wants to learn new skills to increase job opportunities, or the dev who is saddled with maintaining a legacy system. It is not aimed at the sort of people who hang out on P5P or go to conferences with me. More to the point, it's not "modern Perl".

I will be primarily focusing on 5.10.x and 5.8.x releases, with a few forays into 5.12 and above (though they'll largely be covered in a perldelta appendix). The reasoning here is simple: I've never worked with 5.10 or above in a production environment. Ever. Perl survey results, while already a touch out of date, seemed to support my contention that most Perl code in production is 5.10.x or lower. I've also found repeatedly, in interviewing people, keeping abreast of the market or just talking with other devs that everyone agrees on one thing: if you have good basic skills, you can learn the rest on the job. I had never worked with Catalyst before the BBC. They didn't care and this is common. Learn the basic well and employers will (usually) be happy to let you learn about 5.12 on company time.

I think it's entirely possible that by the time this book goes to the printer (in about a year or so), that 5.12.x might be more widely used, but I'm not seeing this now. Personally I'd like to write a 5.16 book. In fairness to the "get a job, hippy" theme, I can't. Fortunately, Wrox has been very supportive of this decision and they've already done a good job of helping me find my way in the "Wrox way" of publishing.

In other news, chromatic has been foolish enough to agree to be the technical editor for this work. I'm very grateful for this. He has far, far more experience than I do. If there are any serious omissions in this book, they'll be his fault (just kidding!) I've also assembled a crack team of reviewers, of which at least two have no Perl experience. They're my fallback in case Perl gurus have blind spots.

My only fear is the amount of time it's going to take away from my wife and daughter but my wife was insistent that I take this opportunity because it was simply too good to pass up. I'm a very lucky man.

11 Comments

Excellent news! This is just the kind of book I want to read. I look forward to its release.

Any idea on when this book might be ready? I’d like to promote it as part of Perl: The Next Generation. However, it would have to be ready to publish around the time of YAPC::NA 2012 if I was to do that.

Let me see if I can get this right.

In 2000, Wrox publish a book called "Beginning Perl" written by Simon Cozens.

In 2003, Wrox go out of business. The Wrox name is acquired by Riley, but most of the titles go to Apress.

In 2004, Apress publish a second edition of "Beginning Perl" which has been updated by James Lee. Lee and Apress also publish a third edition in 2010.

In 2012, the Wrox who are now part of Wiley are going to publish a completely different book called "Beginning Perl", whilst the original Wrox "Beginning Perl" is still on sale (but published by Apress).

Have I got that right? That's not confusing at all :-)

You made my head hurt! :)

I wish they would update "Elements of Programming with Perl" that Manning put out. I liked that one. Packed a lot in with good examples and everything.

The reasoning here is simple: I've never worked with 5.10 or above in a production environment. Ever.

I added emphasis on what I thought was the scariest part and is so true.

I can understand this because until recently I only had a chance to use Perl 5.8 in production. Now I get to use 5.12.3 and I am liking it.

I am interested in giving this book a read, thanks Ovid for taking the time to write it.

RHEL6 has perl 5.10 - which will mean a less prehistoric version of perl will soon start emerging.

Also, if you pay for RHEL (as my company does) you should also raise tickets over and over asking for up to date versions of perl. Dont let them make the excuses about "backwards compatibility" either, perl does that out of the box. You pay them, hassle them!

I find the idea of providing inside information on what is actually required by a Perl shop, quite refreshing. Perl can be applied to a vast array of subject areas and this would be invaluable for people who want to know on which areas to focus so to land a good job, or people wanting to know how a Perl oriented business operates.

What I also find great is that the book encourages the "if you have good basic skills, you can learn the rest on the job" way of thinking since you really cannot know everything ahead.

Saying that,I don't think that the title accurately depicts what the book is about.Starting a title with "Beginning..." is too contrived. In my humble opinion a title like "Real World Perl" and a subtitle of "Learn Perl from within the Industry", something along those lines, would be more on target.

Looking forward to its release

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About Ovid

user-pic Freelance Perl/Testing/Agile consultant and trainer. See http://www.allaroundtheworld.fr/ for our services. If you have a problem with Perl, we will solve it for you. And don't forget to buy my book! http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Perl-Curtis-Poe/dp/1118013840/