Learn Perl 5 By Doing It (Udemy.com)

Much better than one of the courses I took on a competing website. Minor hiccups with the fact that the simple http library doesn't work with the author's website anymore and most sites require https to function these days, but was able to get things working. Also had a little struggle with current version of MySQL on macOS since the MySQL Workbench is no longer supported. Was able to use SQlite to more or less achieve the purpose. Overall, an enjoyable course and glad I found it and took some time to get through all the lessons. Thank you!

A really good online course. It gives the necessary knowledge to be able to do a lot of stuff but also to have the background to search on your own for more topics. Really a plus that he was coding live, personally I can understand and learn much more with this method than with videos which tutor has the code ready and only comments it. Be aware that you should have some basic knowledge of programming before starting the course (which is actually a benefit as you don't spend time in really basic stuff but useful ones).

It seems to be a good introduction to perl, introducing the most common things that are used in a script, which is what I wanted to learn, so that is good. I had problems with opening some of the resources attached to the course (I downloaded them, but when opening in a text editor only saw weird characters) and I had some issues with the database section, where you need to install an additional perl module, and this cannot be done in the way that is shown in the course anymore.

There was something about this course that got me to actively write some scripts that those other courses didn't have. Maybe it's the simple syntax that Perl has, or maybe it's the fitting pace that the course has for a first time learner. Anyway, this course featured many things that I actually wanted to learn, and now I have been able to produce scripts of my own, which many times has been painstaking with other languages (I don't know why). What could be done is maybe expand the web development part to incorporate frameworks (Catalyst? Mojolicious? CGI.pm?) or some state-of-the-art machine learning modules (which I have no clue of). OR maybe even Perl 6! Thanks for this and looking forward to seeing some more Perl videos.

I've been a PHP developer for about 16 years and used Perl for the last time somewhere back in 2001. So I definitely needed a Perl refresher which is exactly what this course seemed to offer. I now feel confident starting my new job, which also involves Perl. :-) If you are new to programming I would not recommend starting with this course though. It's probably better to first read up on some basic concepts and only then dive into this course. Another tip: use the accelerate function of Udemy, as the pace is quite slow in most videos. I had mine set about 1.5x pretty much all the time and even then it sometimes felt a little slow. Overall a good course for my purposes, so thanks a lot John! :-)

Really liked the course. If you're looking to learn the basics of perl and its most common applications, you've got to follow this course. It will ramp up your knowledge faster than going through books and crash courses on the web. I'd really recommend people following the course, to try to redo the lessons' goals own their own and if possible, to try to find a real application in their daily work that could make use of this info. I did and it helped me a lot. To conclude, thanks John for the effort you put in developing this course. Great material.

First, anything John Purcell does is going to be great; I have been learning from this guy for years, he is among the best, no question. My criticism is: Too much time spent on regEx in early videos; since this is geared toward people who know at least one other language, I feel like basic regEx could/should(?) be a prerequisite. The variable naming convention the instructor uses is logical, but when learning a new language, especially one with less intuitive syntax and lots of referencing/dereferencing, it made it slightly less clear. Overall really great series though. I was immediately able to apply things I learned here, particularly working with XML and SQL.

This is an okay introduction-to-programming course. As someone who has programmed in other languages but is not a Perl expert, I found my mind wandering quite often due to the slow pace. Also, there are certain gaps in the instuctor's knowledge that are surprising. To pick one example, he encourages the use of tabs for white space, which is a *terrible* practice because the output is unpredictable (see lecture 31 for proof). Also, there are excessive typos during the talks due to his use of an unfamiliar Hungarian keyboard. It detracts from what you're trying to learn, and there's no excuse for that.

The course would run much smoother if the examples had been worked out in advanced, and placed in the instructors notes. Trying to come up with examples, such as cats, what do cats eat, and replacing data so as not to offend detracts from the lessons. For me, I'm following intently until he changes his mind, and it's like a slap. Other people may not feel this way. For course content, it is excellent. It's the presentation. I left using New Boston tutorials because of the unprepared examples, and the comments that students like to see errors. My feeling is that I want a total professional presentation. Errors can be embedded to show, but those errors should also be practiced and planned.

The information is there, but there are large gaps of knowledge that I had to fill in by searching other resources. I was particularly not satisfied with explanations like: "I don't know what this is but it works", "I have no idea why is this written like that but you'll get used to it", etc Going the extra mile and explaining what a subroutine, method or keyword is is important, especially for a beginner. It is the first tutorial that does not explain these terms or others like it. However, as I said, the information was useful and the tutorial is easy to follow. I can say I have a basic understanding of Perl now.