Title: Perl Fun, and Books!
Date: 2021-03-19
Written By: TeraDyne
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So, I mentioned on my web-side blog[1] that I decided to pick up and work on
Chronicle[2], an SSG that I used to use a while back, and which has become
unmaintained by its creator Steve Kemp. In fact, it was superseded by a golang
based SSG called ephemeris[3], and I'm not really a fan of Go. Like, I don't
hate it, but I'm just not a fan of it. But I like what I'm learning with Perl,
so of course, I'll gravitate toward something in that language.
But one other thing I want to make is an ncurses-based Gopher client in Perl.
As much as I like both lynx[4] and ncgopher[5], I think it'd make for a nice
little challenge once I feel I'm ready. Hell, maybe I could even make a
Tk-based GUI version for the hell of it, or GTK if I really felt up to the
task. More likely going to be Tk, though.
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I also should mention that I've gotten a number of books tonight, thanks to
the "Learn You More Code Bundle"[6] on HumbleBundle. I went with the $18 tier
and got all 15 of the books, but I wasn't really targeting all of them. Only:
* "Think Like a Programmer" ($1 tier)
* "Python Playground" ($1 tier)
* "Wicked Cool Shell Scripts" ($1 tier)
* "Learn Java The Easy Way" ($1 tier)
* "The Rust Programming Language" ($10 tier)
* "The Linux Command Line" ($10 tier)
* "Effective C" ($18 tier)
Mind you, just one of these books is usual around $30 USD, so I got them
/cheap/! And they come as PDFs, ePub files, or Mobi files (for Kindle). I got
the PDFs for my iPad, and the ePubs for reading through `epr`[7] on my laptop.
I also mentioned previously that I ordered a...crapton of books from eBay, &
that most of them are in the mail. I got the "Perl Resource Kit: Unix Edition",
and either 6 or 7 of the others I ordered might be in later today. The list?
* "Perl Resource Kit: Unix Edition", which came with these 4 titles:
* "Perl Module Reference Volume 1"
* "Perl Module Reference Volume 2"
* "Programming with Perl Modules"
* "Perl Utilities Guide"
* "Mastering Perl/Tk" (I already had "Learning Perl/Tk")
* "Advanced Perl Programming"
* "Perl & LWP"
* "Perl & XML" (Because yes, this is nice for me to know)
* "Perl Objects, References, and Modules"
* "Programming with Curses"
* "sed & awk Pocket Reference"
My copy of "sed & awk" from the O'Reilly series is a bit delayed, but yeah...
I had to make room on my bookshelf for many of these. But I bought them because
I do like having physical books when possible. Unlike the internet, having a
book doesn't need me to be online just to read it, so I can disconnect and
focus when I need to do so.
Likewise with ebooks, but it's more difficult to find them cheap, unlike the
used book market. "Perl Resource Kit: Unix Edition" was $30 with free shipping,
originally about $150. Most of the others were $5-$7 each with free shipping,
and the others that I've collected over time were about the same. Meanwhile,
O'Reilly killed its ebook store, and other stores have them around $20-$30, and
those usually aren't DRM-free, which makes them a non-starter for me.
I also don't have access to good used bookstores locally, so eBay is my go-to
for that purpose. But it's worked out well for me so far. I won't complain.
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[1]:
http://blog.prismdragon.net
[2]:
https://steve.fi/software/chronicle/
[3]:
https://github.com/skx/ephemeris
[4]:
https://lynx.invisible-island.net/
[5]:
https://github.com/jansc/ncgopher
[6]:
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/learn-you-more-code-no-starch-press-books
[7]:
https://github.com/wustho/epr
