The Effective Perler » classroom training

Effective Perl Programming at Frozen Perl 2011

brian d foy — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 18:15:13 +0000

On Friday, February 4, 2011 at Frozen Perl, I’m teaching a master class based on Effective Perl Programming, 2nd Edition. The master class is a low-cost, condensed class format given at a public Perl event. The cost of this one-day class is $100, and there are a limited number of $25 seats for full-time students.

In the one-day class for intermediate Perl programmers, I’ll cover selected topics from the book and possibly from this website.

The handful of basic Perl concepts

brian d foy — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 23:39:05 +0000

I’ve now given the second Effective Perl Programming class, this time a two-day master class at YAPC::NA 2010 in Columbus. The common comment during the class seemed to be “You just blew my mind again”. I’m also giving this talk in a one day format at YAPC::EU in Pisa on Aug 7

Most of the class goes back to the basics and re-learning the handful of underlying rules in Perl. These are the things that we don’t get bogged down with in Learning Perl, where we want to get as much Perl in front of people as soon as possible so they can start writing Perl programs (no matter how ugly they might look). Effective Perl Programming, however, takes that to another level as Perlers come back to think about the subtle things that they ignored while they were trying to get the big picture. Learning any language is a spiralling effort to big up the big concepts then coming back around to refine them, over and over.

I’ve started to make a list of the handful of things that Perlers need to understand, and none of it has to do with tricky syntax. Many people never pick up these concepts, so they come up with complicated models to explain why things happen. Instead, the Perler just needs to understand:

Data and variables are different things (e.g. lists and arrays)
Operators matter more than data for deciding what happens
Context is important (strings and numbers; scalar, list, and void)
Run-time versus compile time, and when things happen despite their location in the code

Effective Perl Programming at YAPC::NA 2010

brian d foy — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 06:50:16 +0000

I’ll be teaching an Effective Perl Programming course at YAPC::NA in Columbus, OH on June 24 and 25 at the conference venue. The cost of the two day master class is just $240, and this year that includes your snacks and lunches each day.

Josh and I will also have a box of signed copies of the book, although those might go fast during the conference (and aren’t part of the course fee). Of course, you can also buy your book in advance and have us sign it during the conference.

Effective Perl Programming at Frozen Perl 2010

brian d foy — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 14:47:19 +0000

On Friday, February 5, 2010 at Frozen Perl, I’m teaching a new master class based on our book, Effective Perl Programming, 2nd Edition. The master class is a low-cost, condensed class format given at a public Perl event. The cost of this one-day class is $100, and there are a limited number of $25 seats for full-time students.

In the one-day class for intermediate Perl programmers, I’ll cover selected topics from the book, including:

Working with Unicode in Perl
Tricks with filehandles
New regex features in Perl 5.10 and later
Playing with pack
Using closures to make things simpler
and other topics as time allows

Although the book hasn’t been published yet, it is available for pre-order on Amazon, and attendees to the class can get a sneak peek at the working manuscript as well as a soft copy of the course slides.