use Perl

• Perl vs. C (Score:3, Interesting)

  by djberg96 (2603) on 2003.07.22 8:27 (#22329) Journal

  I doubt that learning C will make you a better Perl programmer, though it's certainly a handy language to know. If anything, it will make you appreciate Perl that much more.

  Where it may help you later on is analyzing extensions that folks have written should you ever delve into their source code. Or perhaps one day you'll even look at the (*gasp*) Perl source code and actually understand it!

  As for good books, I think ORA's Practical C Programming is a pretty good beginners book and Sam's C Primer Plus is a good book all-around.

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• c =~ latin (Score:3, Insightful)

  by inkdroid (3294) on 2003.07.22 10:19 (#22334) Homepage Journal

  One time I snuck down to Philadelphia to hear MJD talk about something interesting. During the intermission I spoke with someone (can't remember name now) about Perl and C, and he described C as the Latin of programming languages. So many languages borrow their syntax and style from it that it is useful to know. Many people will use interpreted languages like perl, python, java, php which are implemented in C. So like Latin, C isn't always used directly all that often, but an understanding of it can illuminate your understanding of other languages that you may use more frequently. I don't think he meant that C was a dead language by any means, but just that it occupied this special place. I also have been meaning to learn more C, reading books etc. One that I saw mentioned on the london.pm list, and which I'm really enjoying right now is Expert C Programming [amazon.com]. I'm not an expert by any means, but this book makes a really good follow on to K&R since it talks about the edges of C, and doesn't eschew the strangeness of C. Anyhow, good luck, and keep going! You might want to look at the Perl6 development that is going on as well.

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