Resources for getting started on "modern" Perl

Answer 1

chromatic is in the process of writing a Modern Perl book which is available for preview in his Github account. The recent Catalyst book by Kieren Diment and Matt Trout covers several modern perl practices and the current "Enlightened Stack" as Matt I believe calls it.

There is also work going on for a Moose book, but I doubt it will be available before next summer even if the authors were able to focus on it full time. For learning Best Practices, as long as you take it with a huge grain of salt the discussion in Damian's Perl Best Practices is worth reading. I wouldn't recommend his practices are best, but they illuminate where the conversation points are and you can google around for people's comments on it. The biggest problem I personally had was the OO suggestions it had, and it led me to find Moose which I adore.

Finally, interact with the community. Join a mailing list or three, an irc channel or two, and blog regularly about what you're learning. The Perl community is generally supportive of helping people who really are interested in learning find the tools they need.

Answer 2

Learning Perl, 5th Edition is current up to 5.10. There's even a chapter for the smart match operator, just like you want, in addition to the other new features that a beginner will want. If you want to start learning Perl, that's the book to use. Once you get through it, move onto whatever else you want to do. I'll have Effective Perl Programming, 2nd Edition out around the start of spring too. That will be current up to 5.10.1 (and maybe a little farther since we use at least one 5.12 feature in some code).

You really don't want a book on Catalyst or Moose. Anything you read will be out of date because those projects have a high velocity and the practices change pretty quickly. You're going to need to learn the basics before you dive into the advanced topics, anyway.

To continue as a programmer, you're going to have to get used to not depending on books. I can't write them as fast as stuff changes, so you have to learn from the documentation too. That's just how life is.

Answer 3

I would recommend the mentioned Learning Perl 5th Edition followed by Damian Conway's Perl Best Practices (also previously mentioned).

I would like also point you to the PBP Module Recommendation Commentary that discusses the current "community view" of the modules discussed in Perl Best Practices.

Despite what is discussed (or not) at this site, two of my favorite Perl Best Practice recommendations are Data::Alias and Smart::Comments (Even though Smart::Comments is a source filter, you can easily remove it before sending your code to production. It is great for debugging.).

Answer 4

There was an excellent talk at OSCON by Paul Fenwick on "Awesome Things You've Missed in Perl" where he gives several code examples and usage tips for using Modern Perl.

The talk was recorded, but it's not on the list of recordings yet: http://www.oscon.com/oscon2010/public/schedule/proceedings

Here are some other great talks worth checking out that also provide examples of Modern Perl:

• Top 10 Perl Performance Tips

• Understanding and Optimizing your Code with Devel::NYTProf

• Moose is Perl: A Guide to the New Revolution

And finally (not from OSCON):

Larry Wall speaking at Google