Comment by raffael_de
2 days ago
The Camel Book.
There was something so wonderfully down-to-earth and humane about those O'Reilly books. But actually most IT books had something casually playful and creative about them. A quality you rarely find these days.
The camel book was “programming Perl” and was more geared towards existing programmers IIRC… there was also the llama book, “learning Perl”, which was maybe what GP was referring to?
Learning Perl (the llama book) was my first programming book, and it taught me programming in general, not just Perl, and I still think it was an amazing book. Very approachable, helpful to beginners, I read it cover to cover. There’s also “learning Perl objects references and modules”, which is a bit of a sequel to Learning Perl. Those two books helped me land my first gig as a Perl programmer, and started my whole career.
Thank you, it was indeed Learning Perl, the llama book.
It was the second book that I actually loved. I read it several times, in no particular order, like one just dives into chomping on a fond snack.
…and sadly because they're already outdated by the time they reach the printing press these days.
Maybe
But I couldn't understand anything of it.
Hence I became an economist within cyber security instead.