Review: Perl Best Practices
This is the text of my amazon review, I gave it 5 stars. It is listed in my Developer’s Bookshelf and is highly recommended.
This book is probably one of the best tech books I’ve read. The topics he covers range quite a bit starting from the very beginning with programming style through documentation and error handline. Style is a contentious topic, if ever there was one, but he argues convincingly for each of the points he makes and gives practical reasons why it benefits you to code in a certain way. We’ve all heard many of these things before, but I’ve never been convinced that the particular way I coded was less good than any other proposed way - this book has changed my opinion on that.
He brings up so many topics, some well discussed and some more esoteric and presents practical benefits that almost anyone who reads it, I expect, will come away with some new habits. I think there are very few books I’ve ever read that could convince people to change their programming ways - years of developing versus a couple hours of reading. You may not agree with every point he makes, but he’ll make you think about why you do certain things, and that can’t but help make you a better programmer.
I can not recommend this book enough to any perl developer out there. If you’re new to it or been doing it for years, this book is for you.
