Reason to learn:
I've started learning PERL. The question is why I'm learning PERL. There's a reason or more than one reason. The main driving reason is my switch to a different JEE application server. In coming 10-12 months I'll be moving to JBoss AS from WAS. The IBM's flagship product in WebSphere category will be obsoleted from my current organization within a period of 12 months from now. The WAS will be replaced by JBoss because it is cheaper and can do 'everything' what WAS is able to do. But, this is true to the extend of ability to run JEE applications. The user interface of JBoss is not even close to compare to WAS's. The WAS's GUI is called 'Integrated Solutions Console' (ISC) while JBoss's is called 'JBoss Operations Network' (JON). It's like iphone versus blackberry. Both are good at certain level but I think iphone is better. The ISC can do lot more stuff than JON and also in a very user-friendly way. So, in coming days, there's a plan to do automations for JBoss environment and make it smooth as JON is not able to do as many things as ISC at present. For these automations, PERL will be used and so that is the reason to learn it.
Enough talking about reasons. Here're the some useful links for the PERL course.
1) It is a tutorial based course. Simple text and to-the-point material.
http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/Perl/basic.html
2) I didn't find 'the Llama' book (Learning Perl from O'Reilly) beneficent for initial learning. The authors of that book talks too much about the PERL realted things (history and all that) and their book's structure in first 30-40 pages which I found boring. I was looking for the resource which can give me a head start and provide only necessary information. I would prefer to read that book later and use it as reference.
3) This one nice, too. Tutorial based. I remember w3schools.com when I visit this site. The only problem is there're small horizontal ads in between the course text. I understand that user's need to keep this domain up. Though the one of the best sites I've come across.
http://www.tizag.com/perlT/index.php
4) The best among my all Perl learning searches till date. (11/20/09)
http://www.linuxforums.org/articles/learn-perl-in-10-easy-lessons-lesson...
I'll add other resources as I will find and use them and think that they should be archived.
