The Perl Journal September 2003
I have never had a female intern, nor burgled an opponent's office, nor even traded arms for hostages. Still, I recognize that The Perl Journal reviews of a couple of "best of The Perl Journal" books may give the appearance of a conflict of interest.
But bear with us. We, the newcomers, who have participated in TPJ's new electronic incarnation can't personally take credit for John Orwant's five marvelous years of paper TPJ. Nor do we collect any royalties from the books. While we enjoy basking in the glow of the Perl community's original technical periodical of record, it's a lot to live up to.
Case in point: The recent O'Reilly & Associates releases of Games, Diversions & Perl Culture: Best of The Perl Journal and Web, Graphics & Perl/Tk: Best of the Perl Journal (following its 2002 "Best of TPJ" volume Computer Science & Perl Programming).
Games, Diversions & Perl Culture is my favorite of the two. It's sumptuously compounded. The emphasis throughout is Perl as a community of thinkers programming applications that interact with humans in the real world.
Of course, the first word is from Larry Wall, reprinted from the first TPJ. In his essay "Wherefore Art, Thou?" (the title is a nerdy pun on "art, n." vs "art, v.pres.2p.sing."), Wall explicitly credits his liberal arts inspiration, planting Perl squarely on the playing field of computer languages for genuine intellectuals, making it, if you will, a modern companion of such ancients as Prolog and Forth.
After Larry's introduction, all 20 TPJ's hard-paper covers follow, reproduced in black and white, and unfortunately, cover art joining the savvy and enthusiasm of Internet Golden Age gurus with a delight in paradox reminiscent of Martin Gardiner and the aesthetic sensibilities of Mad Magazine.
That's just the plain fun stuff. The rest is a collection of TPJ articles over the years, providing a sampler of the evolution of the Perl practice as demonstrated by some of the more amusing and interesting projects chosen by the authors such as:
Sundials powered by Perl. The Human Genome project. Using Perl to programmatically enhance one's comp.lang.perl.misc newsreading experience by filtering flames, spam, and bozos. Controlling X10 home automation with Perl. All this, when you're not busy resolving telescoping images of the cosmos in Perl.
There's Perl-generated Haiku, Perl that is Haiku, and the Obfuscated Perl Contest that presents Perl not as Haiku but as Vogon Poetry.
You'll also find games and game theory such as the Prisoner's Dilemma in Perl, played in team competition, with the most altruistic algorithm scoring dead last in the contest. There are timely political thoughts on secure Internet voting, and homely observations on the fragility of the Perl syntax presented by NORADprogrammer Ray F. Piodasoll in his poignant article, "Perl and Nuclear Weapons Don't Mix."
The book has lots of code, lots of theorizing and speculation, and lots of history. All in all, it's a real winner.
Web, Graphics & Perl/Tk: Best of The Perl Journal, is more "technotech," focusing on important linguistic, syntactic, and algorithmic minutiae, including some important articles from early times in the emergence of popular Perl APIs.
In its section on the Web, this volume presents seminal articles on CGI, HTM, mod_perl, web servers, web spiders, and wireless surfing with WAP and WML.
In the section on graphics, we find Gnuplot, OpenGL, ray tracing, the Gimp, Glade, Gnome, real-time video, and other likely suspects. The Perl/Tk section is focused on using Tk to provide GUI front ends for Perl-coded applications and games. But you already guessed that.
Although Web, Graphics & Perl/Tk is less eclectic, inspirational, and soaring than its companion volume, you can't take the fun out of Perl and Perl programmers. If you've ever needed a clickable Beavis, it's found herein. Or if the web content these days (say, for example, the news) seems to you to be a bit surreal, you can render it genuinely surreal (at least, for your own viewing) with the HTML Mangler, powered by the travesty algorithm.
Web, Graphics & Perl/Tk is narrower in focus than its companion volume and deeper in penetration. You will read Games, Diversions & Perl Culture because you are interested in Perl. You will read Web, Graphics & Perl/Tk because you are interested in the particular types of applications referenced in that work. If you possess that interest, Web, Graphics & Perl/Tk is a unique resource.
As it has become customary, the web sites for each of these books (see "References") provide tables of contents, author information, sample chapters, example code, and reader reviews.
Games, Diversions & Perl Culture: http://www.oreilly.com/ catalog/tpj3/
Web, Graphics & Perl/Tk: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/tpj2/
TPJ