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Programming IT Technology

Randal Schwartz And Tom Phoenix Interview 11

Posted by timothy from the what-animal-is-next dept.
O'Reilly has put up an interesting interview with Randal Schwartz and Tom Phoenix, the guys behind the llama book (Learning Perl). In addition to all the perl stuff, Randal gives his take on Smalltalk, Ruby, and Python. And (not surprisingly) they plug the newest edition of the book.
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Randal Schwartz And Tom Phoenix Interview More

Randal Schwartz And Tom Phoenix Interview

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  • Has anyone else noticed that Tom Christiansen's visibility has gone to zero lately? Ever since the Perl Cookbook was released there hasn't been a peep out of that corner. I ask because the original authors of Learning Perl were Schwartz and Christiansen.

    Dancin Santa

    • Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Informative)

      by merlyn ( 9918 ) on Friday August 10, 2001 @06:22AM (#2125090) Homepage Journal
      the original authors of Learning Perl were Schwartz and Christiansen.
      No. I was the sole original author of Learning Perl, and Larry Wall provided a foreword. Tom was originally intended to be merely a reviewer of the second edition, but used his influence to become a co-author of the second edition (and get me moved off the team for the third Camel). I'm not allowed to discuss my feelings publicly on either of those movements. But I'm very happy to have created a Christiansen-free third edition of the llama, which I think stands head-and-shoulders above either of the previous two editions, thanks to a significant contribution from my senior trainer, Tom Phoenix.

    • Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by chromatic ( 9471 )

      He was an author on the third edition of Programming Perl [oreilly.com] and spoke at the Perl Conference [oreilly.com] a couple of weeks ago. Less visibility than normal, yes, but still around.
  • I've always heard good things about the majority of O'Reilly books. However, I usually see their books oriented at those that already have experience. Are there any O'Reilly publications on C++ or Linux/Unix that are for beginners?

    Any help is appreciated :)

    "Where are you going?" - Cybil to Basil
    "I'm going to insert a large garden gnome into Mr. O'Reilly, Dear." - Basil to Cybil
    --Fawlty Towers--

    • "C++ in 21 Days" is a typical example of why I default to O'Reilly when possible. I'm not sure why I would want a book that was written in 21 days.

      Other tech book publishers than O'Reilly often produce "books" that are little more than the notes that a particular person took learning a particular technology for their own purposes. There is little attention paid to the needs or experience level of the reader. One can usually (not always - their MySQL book is almost worthless imho for example) rely on O'Reilly without getting a specific recommendation from someone.
      <P>
      O'Reilly indeed has a nice introductory C++ text: "Practical C++ Programming" by Oualline.
      <P>
      The best introductory unix books are still "The Unix Programming Environment" by Kernighan and Pike, and "Unix for the Impatient", (actually has an animal on the cover, but not an O'Reilly book) by Abrahams & Larson. Both classics. I still use them daily.
      <P>
      I don't recommend C++ either as a first language or as a first OO language, if you can avoid it. If want to learn to think in objects and you have the choice of language, I *strongly* recommend Peter van den Linden's "Just Java", the book that got your correspondent over the hump in understanding object thinking.
      <P>
    • Have you looked at Practical C++? I can't vouch for it's quality, but I did start using Practical C (by the same author). I am switching to Sam's "C++ in 21 Days (Linux edition)" though, to learn C++, since it focuses specifically on the GNU compiler tools and has sections on GNOME and KDE.
  • As a competitor to Perl (ala Python, Ruby, etc), I'm hearing more about PHP, due to things like mod_php, etc. I wonder what their comments would have been on that...

    --LP

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