Customer Reviews

Object Oriented Perl: A Comprehensive Guide to Concepts and Programming Techniques

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I was a bit skeptical when I was first handed a copy of Object Oriented Perl because I tend to be biased toward O'Reilly books. However, after reading it I felt it is one of the best Perl books I have come across. Most Perl books deal with Perl as a scripting language. Conway treats pull like a real development language. He gives the standard introduction to object orientation and objects in Perl and then quickly moves past this to look at some of the unique features of Perl's OO development in Perl. For example, he covers blessing every type of reference possible, why you would want to bless a particular type of reference and what the pros and cons are of each approach.

Conway also gives a very thorough coverage of implementating true data encapsulation in Perl and presents several methods for doing so.

Another thing that struck me about this book is Conway's attention to detail. In his code samples, he carefully explains why each line was written a certain way. He even notes which version of Perl a certain feature or module first appeared in.

All in all, a wonderful book. Even if you have been developing in Perl for a while this book has something to offer.

/Object-Oriented Perl/ is miles ahead of any other book on OOP that I've ever seen. It sets a new standard in how concepts of OOP should be explained, and how they should be related to the language that the OOP framework is implemented in.

And the best thing about this book is that, on the way to explaining various OOP concepts, it manages to elucidate all sorts of non-OOP advanced programming techniques in Perl. So I recommend this book to anyone who's finished /Learning Perl/ and is looking for what to learn next.

It's a surprising achievement, and one that makes this book very worthwhile reading for people who don't even particularly care about OOP!

And, conversely, because /Object-Oriented Perl/ touches on so many of the possible approaches to OOP, I think that this book would be interesting to people who are interested in OOP, but not terribly interested in Perl per se.

It is, in short, a book of immediate as well as lasting value.

Conway's Object Oriented Perl is the definitive work on object-oriented Perl programming and will probably remain so for some time (if not indefinitely). It illustrates how to construct all manner of object-oriented frameworks in Perl and aptly demonstrates the wide range of styles that are possible--from simplistic to complex and constrained.

My only complaint about this work, which is more of an opinion that isn't relative to its rating, is that I think Perl programs are more beautiful and elegant when they don't embody complex scaffolding of the type that this book so ably describes. I see this book as a Perl counterpart to Coplien's Advanced C++, but in the case of C++, it's possible to bury scaffolding in a library out of sight in a way that isn't quite possible in Perl. I'm not sure how many Perl programmers actually know C++ (my experience is that it's a surprisingly small number) but I think that C++ is a language that tolerates and even demands such complexity in a way that Perl doesn't.

One thing for sure--the coverage of objects here is vastly superior to that in the turquoise Camel book (Programming Perl). I'm sorry, but I think the topic deserves more descriptive terminology than "thingy." Conway knows his concepts, knows how to execute them in Perl, and sets them down lucidly and, yes, exhaustively.

I'm not sure it's worth it in the long run, but that's just me, and obviously others see architectural tradeoffs differently. Meanwhile, this is an excellent, literate work that enhances both the capabilities of programmers and the stature of Perl. If nothing else, studying it will definitely improve your understanding of the language and idioms of Perl. But I would expect it to be more rewarding than that.

...as a 1989 Keanu Reeves might say, if his Ted Logan character could possibly comprehend computer programming.

To my ever-growing stack of O'Reilly Perl books, I've just added this gem, which fits nicely alongside Effective Perl Programming (ISBN 0201419750 for the uninformed) as a non-O'Reilly Perl book that every Perl programmer should have at their disposal.

Not content with writing just a Perl book, Damian Conway spends the first chapter explaining normally confusing object-orientation concepts in a very clear manner. This tutorial alone is worth a good chunk of the purchase price, especially if you tend to find typical articles on object-oriented programming overwhelming. To fill the rest of your order, the next 400+ pages are pure Perl, as Conway takes every concept introduced in the first chapter and spends a chapter on each one, showing you how Perl accomplishes them. The examples and code samples are very clear, very real-world, and (thusly) very easy to understand. A good deal of time is also spent on tricks and optimizations to help reduce the much-touted performance hit from OO Perl. The later chapters dive into more advanced topics and start combining all the core concepts together.

Besides teaching all the ins and outs of OOP, a good number of paragraphs are also devoted to non-OOP advanced Perl techniques. This book transcends its title; it's a book for anyone looking to move into the advanced Perl realm, OOP or not.

This book has definitely helped me increase my level of Perl competence and the knowledge gained is presently working to streamline a number of projects I'm on. I'm elated. I think I'll play my air guitar in celebration.

This is an extraordinary book not because it is well-organized, clearly written, and easy to read, though it is all of those things. This is a book that is intriguing and makes one want to try out new things.

I have spend the last couple weeks literally playing with Conway's examples and ideas. It has been tremendous fun. Reading the book is almost like having a clever pal constantly egging one on. "Hey, watch this!" or "Why don't you try it this way?"

No offense to O'Reilly and Co., but this book is exceptionally easy to read and understand. The whole book is a relief from the usual confusing and dry computer book. There is plenty of code and all of it is explained.

Conway is also candid about the problems and advantages of OO perl. For me, this established his credibility early.

I have read several Object Oriented Programming books recently (most of them were C++). This is the first book I have read that has taught the material in a format that the average person can read and understand. The examples were great. They were of everyday items the the average person could relate to. The code through out the book was helpful to get the perl implementation of the OOP ideas. I would recommend this to anyone wanting to Object Oriented Programming no matter what the language of choice is. For me, the bonus is that it is in Perl.

Preface: I'm a detail person, the top level view is what I ignore to get to the facts. I am entirely turned off by the normal practice of writing up one or two example apps, and then ignoring giving the full details on commands, such as what all the options are, or what the syntax to uuse is. If your app is different than the example, you're pretty much out of luck. That's the situation that other books I'd bought had placed me, while I was trying to learn Perl for a non-trivial app I needed to deliver. I was so frustrated I was nearly in tears.

I don't recall what caused me to buy this book; perhaps it was the only Perl OO book. I am so glad I did, because the amount of info that the author has put into this book is amazing. Not just that, it's the *choices* he made, of what to explain. He's picked all the pieces that the other books glossed over, and examined the missing pieces, so that I now understand the"why" behind many oddities, and I now can push myself much farther forward.

Sort of like, the other books pose the questions, this book answers them.

If you only buy 2 Perl books, make this one of them. Ignore the fact that the title says OO. Yes, it does a great job of explaining how the OO features mechanically work, but the reason to buy this book is all the extra backgrounder info that's in this, it's worth twice what they're asking for. The data often has nothing to do with the OO features, he's probably remembering all the details that HE had to go run down, and he's giving us all these data pearls (pun intended) for free, along with the payment for the OO data.

Don't buy this book to learn object-oriented programming, but if you want to learn how Perl manages to add OO features, and accidentally learn how Perl adds in a great many other features, then you're in the right place.

After five years of perl hacking, and lot's of wondering about OOP in perl, this book finally relieved me. Single classes were never a problem, but multiple inheritance, was. Even in linear inheritance it was not easy to see, where the object data of the superclasses would go. Things are clarified here. The book also explains OOP as such, which is a good for learning or repetition. The author seems to be extraordinarely versatile in perl hacking and shows every detail of sophisticated use of perl OOP.

Although the book is perfect, besides the typoos (, but there is an errata page on the www), one wonders, whether perl is the ideal language for object oriented programming. It becomes once more clear, that perl is the most powerful language, but also the most complicated one. If one would apply the "tie()" function regularely, then nobody could read the code any more. Despite that, the book is needed, because perl is now everywhere, and it can only be good to master it.

The chapters of the book are: 1.) What you need to know first (an object-orientation primer), 2.) What you need to know second (a Perl refresher), 3.) Getting started, 4.) Blessing arrays and scalars, 5.) Inheritance, 7.) Polymorphism, 8.) Automating class creation, 9.) Ties, 10.) Operator overloading, 11.) Encapsulation, 12.) Genericity, 13.) Multiple dispatch, 14.) Persistent objects, A.) Quick reference guide, B.) What you might know instead [about other OO languages].

A top-notch handling of object oriented perl. Without a doubt, objects in Perl are a different beast from any other language, but this book handles the concepts and details admirably. In addition, some related topics (how to install a Perl module) are included. The style is very O'Reilly-like (why is this book not from O'Reilly?), right down to the humorous footnotes. The appendix covering the differences between Perl and other OO languages is superb. I only wish that Python had been included.

And not only if you're interested in Object Oriented Programming! The first chapter of the book is a general overview of Perl, and I learned a lot of things just from those first 70 pages that I had never found in the other dozen or so Perl books that I have read. Of course, the rest of the book is excellent too. It explains the object oriented features of Perl very clearly, and it is full of simple, elegant and sophisticated examples. However, the author does occasionally slip in some rather arcane code. At one point he described how something could be accomplished with one simple statement, which it took me five minutes to decipher and understand. But overall, the book is excellent, and it taught me some very good lessons in programming techniques and style. I know I will be referring to this book a lot in the future.