Would you recommend the product? yes | Price you paid?: $34.99 | Rating: 8
|
Pros:
|
Great resource for Perl programmers who may have to amend or update someone else's code
|
|
Cons:
|
Not much use to anyone else
|
[ Log in to get rid of this advertisement]
The excellent Groklaw has the following disclaimer: IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer), so I'd like to add the following to this review IANAPP (I Am Not A Perl Programmer). With that in mind, on to the review.
This book is aimed at people who have to maintain, fix or update Perl code written by someone else. Since I do not fall into that category (see above), I cannot vouch for the methods iven. I can, however, discuss the content and format. This book is 301 pages long and covers (AFAIK) the aspects of what to look for and how to do it. Interestingly for a programmers guide, it also delves into the 'human aspect' - how to approach the original coder, not badmouthing the team who worked on it and things like that. I didn't expect to see that and it is welcome.
It has 12 chapters and an appendix of source code. Without listing them, the chapters are about the how and the why of taking on the code - from being forced to do it as your job to doing it to make it better and more recent.
This book has many examples of code and of tests and modules. It contains good advice to the maintainer and has a large number of web links and references.
The book is well written, funny in places and has some great quotes to head up the chapters. While I couldn't really make use of this book right now (but one day.....) I would definitely recommend it to the target audience.
|
