From: Tom Christiansen <tchrist@mox.perl.com>
Subject: REVIEW: Perl5 for Dummies
Date: 13 Jun 1998 21:37:16 GMT

Perl5 for Dummies, by Paul E Hoffman, and published by IDG Books, is
hereby awarded a rating of 2 Camels on the Camel Critiques page found
at http://www.perl.com/perl/critiques/

Here's the capule review included there: 


		    Perl5 For Dummies
			by Paul E. Hoffman 

     Barely achieving its two camels, this book is not only made for
     dummies, it's guaranteed to keep you one. But hey, if you like to
     have your competence and intelligence insulted everywhere from the
     title to the text, then this is the book for you.  This book can't
     figure out the difference between an array and a list, thinks there's
     a \v escape, screws up the CGI form decoding (why does everyone
     do this?), doesn't understand the difference between programs and
     libraries, massively screws up quoting on Win32 paths, spreads FUD
     about $_, omits $!, and relegates the true heart and soul of Perl,
     pattern matching and hashes, way to the end, in chapters 14 and
     15 respectively.  So, it's technically screwed up, has hard-to-read
     style, does nearly everything the hard way, hides the good stuff
     where you won't find it, and likes to put its reader down.  Even more
     so, it revels in showing disrespect to anyone who seems to enjoy
     or be good at programming.  Perhaps this makes dummies feel good.
     Its effect on the rest of us can be seen in this review.

     I guess this just goes to show you that the old adage about avoiding
     books with numbers in their titles is right.
-- 
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