Perl 6 Now: The Core Ideas Illustrated with Perl 5

Rating:
Summary: Trivia and notes from the author
Review: Hi everyone!

Here's some trivia you might not otherwise find, and then I'm going to try to clear up exactly what this book *is*.

25% of the royalties on sales of this title have been pledged to the Electronic Frountier Foundation and The Perl Foundation. These two organizations have shaped the world for the better for those of us who love to express ourselves creatively using computers and the 'Net. Being a hacker wouldn't be the same without cryptography or Perl.

http://perl6now.com has a sample chapter, Multidimensional Arrays, which talks about PDL, the Perl Data Language, and doing vectorized operations on light weight, storage efficient large arrays. It also has all of the frontmatter including the Introduction and detailed Table of Contents. The Introduction is the best explanation of the book. There's also a link to my blog and other goodies.

Perl steals madly from other languagers (and always has); Perl 6 stole the coolest batch of features yet; _Perl 6 Now_ introduces these bizarre, alien, potent ideas using Perl 5 CPAN implementations and nearly 800 code listings.

First, it's a decidedly a Perl 5 book. It's about language features recently introduced in Perl 5, language features implemented as CPAN modules that intentionally or coincidentally parallel Perl 6's new features, and it's about advanced use of Perl 5's features to do things that Perl 6 tries to streamline or generalize to put into common reach. Perl 6's syntax will make learning Perl easier for novices but learning a new syntax just plain isn't that interesting to most of us. There are Perl 6 syntax examples but these are secondary to the introduction of the idea that spurred the change. Every idea included has a Perl 5 implementation. There is no hand-waving. Everything works in Perl 5 and everything is relavent to Perl 5. Making so many of Perl 6's ideas work on Perl 5 is no small task - this book contains hundreds of hacks, module demonstrations, tricks, and so on. This isn't a book on Parrot and it's not a book on PONIE (yet, though hopefully a second edition will do better). It only teaches how to incorporate the best parts of most of the languages on Earth to write some seriously mental Perl. If you enjoyed _Object Oriented Perl_, this book is for you.

-scott

P.S.: I wish I could blog here without rating the book, but I can't. Sorry.

Rating:
Summary: I was not looking forward to Perl 6
Review: I'm a Perl dabbler. I use Perl frequently, but my code is generally clumsy and lacking in elegance. It does the job I need done, but people like Larry Wall usually go way over my head when they talk about how to do things.

That's why I've been more than a bit nervous about Perl 6 (it doesn't help when Larry throws around words like 'Apocalypse'). I felt, well, threatened.

Scott Walters book took me by the hand and gently showed me that I have little to fear and a lot to gain. I had read Larry Wall's explanation of Parrot and Ponie and had left still confused; Scott helped me understand it.

I was also happy to learn that I could use available Perl 5 modules that would let me try out Perl 6 features. Scott demonstrates the new features with code, and I could actually try it out myself as I followed along.

I'm sure there will be many, many Perl 6 books, but this was a nice place for me to start.

Rating:
Summary: Perfect for early adopters of Perl 6
Review: This book simplifies the transition from coding in Perl 5 to coding in Perl 6. Common elements and themes between the two languages are demonstrated, along with an introduction to the advances found in Perl 6. Scott outlines a vast set of features using specific examples easily understood by Perl programmers of all levels.
Scott also uses humor throughout to make this Perl 6 guide a fun read. I especially enjoyed an example using pet washing to illustrate type checking (Type Safety chapter)! The expert's voice indeed - I hope we see more books from Mr. Walters.