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Learning Perl is one of the rare books in computing that nearly everyone agrees is great. It takes you through the process of learning the Perl programming language with example code and exercises.

Any time that someone says that they plan to learn Perl, it’s pretty much just assumed that this book will be their first choice as a resource and that reputation is well deserved. It starts out by giving you a sense of where Perl fits into the realm of computer languages and how it came about and then moves on to the actual meat of teaching you the various commands and structures within the language.

One of the things that makes this unique as a book on learning a programming language is that it can really take you a long way past the beginner stage. While the core of the text sticks to explaining the basics and avoids getting tangled up in details that won’t matter to a beginner, the book also contains extensive footnotes to provide more in-depth information.

The writing is very clear, and benefits from the extensive experience that the authors have in teaching people to use Perl. It also includes some humorous comments that I really enjoyed, though I’ll admit to having a weakness for geek humor in general.

I received access to an electronic copy of this book at no charge from O’Reilly Media Inc. for the purpose of writing this review. More information, such as the option of a preview and the errata for the book is available at the Learning Perl catalog page at O’Reilly’s website.

As you would probably assume from the name, this is a talk that Neal Ford did covering the material from his book of the same name. It focuses on the practices and attitudes that can help you to actually get things done as a programmer.

It’s a recording of a talk that the author gave at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention, and it’s clear that they didn’t really do any editing. This is mostly fine, but it is a little strange that they didn’t cut out the parts where the video was silent for extended periods because the speaker needed to take a break for a couple of minutes.

These videos are a good place to start on getting some ideas for how you can be more productive, but (due to obvious time constraints) they don’t include as much information as the book does and really couldn’t serve as a substitute for it. I think what they’d be really good for is helping to keep the general themes fresh in your mind and keep yourself motivated to work on the changes the author is suggesting.

The audio is such that it can still be followed well without watching the video, which could make this a good motivational tool if you listen to it during commutes and workouts to help keep you on the path of refining the way you program.

I received free access to watch this video from O’Reilly Media Inc. for the purpose of writing this review. More information, including a sample segment of the video so that you can get a sense of whether you like the speaker, is available at the Productive Programmer catalog page.

Beautiful Testing is a compilation of a series of distinct essays from developers and testers about what they find beautiful in software testing. Each author chose their own topic and approach, giving readers the opportunity to see both how they think and what they value in the field.

This book has several major themes through it. Some of the authors write with an emphasis on why testing is important and how it fits into the development process. Others chose to focus on specific tools and techniques that aid testing. Finally, some chose to offer case studies on the testing needs of particular pieces of software.

The total effect is wonderful, because it gives you the chance to view the thought process of good software testing at a variety of different levels starting with the general concept of what testers do down to specific details of how particular situations were handled. The result is a book that can both help someone to become a better tester and help him to understand why he should care enough to try.

I received access to an electronic copy of this book from the publisher for the purpose of reviewing it. Additional information about the book, including sample content and a complete table of contents is available at the Beautiful Testing page in the O’Reilly catalog.

This is a recording of a class that was offered by Randal Schwartz that covers basically the same material on how to program with Perl that you would get from studying his bestselling book.

“Learning Perl” is such an iconic book for its topic that it’s often simply called “The Camel Book” in reference to the picture of a camel on its cover. Short of Larry Wall himself, the creator of Perl, there’s hardly anyone who’s better suited to teaching a course of this type.

As a teacher, Randal Schwartz is the sort of man who obviously both knows his subject deeply and knows that he’ll sometimes need to start out with the basic and incomplete version of an explanation to avoid overwhelming his students. Where some people would want to throw around as much detail as possible to prove how smart they are, he’s stays with the necessities.

This video is a great place to start for learning how to program in Perl, though it’s not a replacement for resources like the Learning Perl book itself if you want to pursue the language beyond the basics because he omits some of the more detailed explanations that the book offers as footnotes. I was allowed to watch these videos as part of the blogger review program, and I would particularly recommend them as an excellent companion to study of the book. A sample section from the class is available at the O’Reilly web site for the Learning Perl videos.

Building the Perfect PC is a guide for people who want help in choosing, purchasing, and assembling the various pieces required to make a working computer. It includes a remarkable amount of detail, including photographs to illustrate the process.

I’m not planning to build my next computer quite yet, but reading this book made me wish that I’d known there were guides this good when I went through the process several years ago. I had the opportunity to read a PDF that the publisher provided to me for free and I was thoroughly impressed by how well the authors balanced the need to be clear and detailed with the need to avoid boring readers with information they don’t really want or need.

There’s a lot of great information in here that makes it easy to just use the list of parts they recommend for different purposes or even just take that as a starting point and fine tune the specifications of a computer even more to your needs. They also offer some great insights on issues such as choosing a retailer and how to interpret product reviews.

Though no book about current computer hardware can make it all the way to the publisher without becoming obsolete, one of the things that I love about this publisher is that they will list errata on the book’s website to address any errors that are found.

Even though they go over a lot of the same incidents every time, it’s healthy to look at articles like PC Pro’s When Computers Go Wrong from time to time.

It’s easy for a lot of casual computer users to just assume that the computer must know what it’s doing and click “okay” to every time the computer asks permission. These kinds of articles are a great reminder that there’s a very good reason that the software is designed to come back and get confirmation from a person that its plan is acceptable.

The people writing code for things like nuclear assault detection have about as much incentive as you could imagine to do what they can to get it absolutely write and things still go wrong from time to time. Assuming that comparatively harmless and unimportant software is going to be completely flawless is just a bad plan.

The Ohio Linux Fest is going to be from September 10 to the 11th this year. They have a lot of great speakers lined up, and it really looks like it’s going to be a fantastic event.

I don’t believe I’m going to be able to go, between scrambling to keep up with other projects and not wanting to figure out travel arrangements at the moment. If anyone is looking to have a geeky good time, though, there’s a free registration option.

Have fun!