How to become a guru in real-life?

>>&gt;>> "essential" == essential quint < quintessential1%40hotmail.com">quintessential1hotmail.com> writes:

essential> Where is a good place to learn how to write Perl/CGI?

Do you learn better from a book or a class? Until you narrow that down, the
rest of the answers may be irrelevant.

essential> I am a not really a beginner, but more of a Perl dilettante, and
essential> everything I have learned I have learned on my own. I have taken a
essential> few college courses in general programming structure, C and Unix,
essential> but (aside from the mail lists) I havent been able to find any
essential> place or knowing instructors willing to really teach Perl.

Perl training was huge in 1998-1999. But it's about 1/10th the market size
now, and my company has most of that.

Except for the classes we've done with our Portland-based institutional
partners, we've always lost money (or cancelled classes) on "open enrollment"
Perl training. It's just not a big enough market. Two people want this,
three people want that. Neither of them want to come the same week.

That's why you're not finding a lot of it. Most Perl hackers are self-taught.
Most of the good ones are still employed. In fact, there's a huge shortage of
middle-level Perl hackers willing to work at appropriate rates (not the overly
inflated rates of the dot-com boom). Take a look at jobs.perl.org and
see the steady increase (and desparation) of the jobs being offered.

--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<; merlyn%40stonehenge.com">merlynstonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See PerlTraining.Stonehenge.com for onsite and open-enrollment Perl training!

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--- In perl-beginner%40yahoogroups.com">perl-beginneryahoogroups.com, essential quint
&lt;quintessential1...> wrote:
&gt;
>
> Hello Everyone,
>
> This question is academic, not programmatic. That is to say, it
deals with college, not coding per se.
>
> Where is a good place to learn how to write Perl/CGI?
>
> I am a not really a beginner, but more of a Perl dilettante, and
everything I have learned I have learned on my own. I have taken a
few college courses in general programming structure, C and Unix, but
(aside from the mail lists) I havent been able to find any place or
knowing instructors willing to really teach Perl.
&gt;
> The mailing lists are helpful only in a cursory sense. It's hard
over email to get more than one question at a time answered, people
usually end up referring me back to the manual, and yet my questions
are usually more complex and I tend to favor open verbal discussion.
Ultimately, if I had my way, I'd end up typing a lot more than anyone
would read. An open classroom would seem to facilitate this style of
learning better.
>
> Can anyone make any good recommendations? I'm in the WashDC area,
but I'd be interested in looking at schools on a more general level too.
>;
> Thanks,
>
> q
>
>
>
> __________________________________________________________
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> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

Most Perl coders are self taught , start with a few good books on the
subject , My fave was Perl the black book published by Coriolis
written by Steven Holzner. That and "Perl in a Nutshell&quot; published by
O'reilly. Those two should get you up to speed on Perl , that and
hang out in the UseNet groups reading Post will help you as well.

Next step is to start Coding Perl . I was lucky when I first started
out and got a job coding intranet applications for a surveying
company in my area. That gave me enougf exposure to problem solving
with Perl to get me started exploring usages for Perl . CPAN
contains more answers to problems than I'll probaly use the rest of
my Lifetime.

As for class room instruction , Some Community Collages offer Perl ,
Our local CC did at one time , usualy they require at least 10
students in a class to cover expenses..

There are Online courses avaiable as well.

Greg

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