UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi

I am working on perl for last 3 yrs and as part of knowledge sharing i have been told to conduct sessions with other teams.Only 1 session with basic details. My problem is i am not sure what all should i cover in this tut ? because i learned perl on my own. so i am not sure where to start from( in other words what should be the scope of this session ) . all people who will be attending the sessions are from Java,c++ world. So just wanted to know what all should i cover. Just give me points i will do the rest of the stuff.

My approach would be: take a simple problem that's easy with Perl, eg. parsing a file and writing the statistics to a database. Then proceed designing the program like you would in any other language. Where ever applicable, demonstrate TMTOWTDI. Demonstrate CPAN by downloading and installing DBD::SQLite as the database, and the power of perldoc to read it's documentation.

If possible References also..

my suggestion would be,

Code:

Introductuction
Perl Features
Structure of Perl Program
Variables & Datastructures
Operators
Statement block & Conditional blocks.
Subroutines
References
Filehandling
Regular Expression
OOPS

Since they are already programmers, they could easily catch up with you, if it is in this sequence.

In my opinion, one aspect I observed that is important is that many new entrants to Perl would likely find it sort of confusing at first sight, especially for those who are used to have everything checked at compile time such as Java and C++, with a much more structured syntax compared with more dynamic languages such as Perl.

It's sort of easy to find a book or online resources to learn a programming language, so I think your emphasis in a knowledge sharing session is best placed on something that is not as directly acquired from those resources. Experience is the key. Do show them what Perl can do, and why that kind of flexibility is good.

Another thing I think you may consider is that you can be more of a motivator than a teacher, and try to help them learn on their own. There are a lot of details in the perldoc itself and if one can understand how to read them then it will be the most important resource they should go to when they have questions. If you know the stuff, then some guidance will be helpful, say the Perl OOP is not easily accepted by most Java/C++ programmers and they likely need some support there.