2.6 Finding Help

Make sure you have the necessary documentation. If you installed Perl as outlined earlier, documentation is installed as part of the general Perl installation, and the instructions that come with your Perl distribution explain how to get the documentation. There is also excellent online documentation; look for it at the Perl home page.

Programming resources are places to look for answers to programming questions. Perl resources are essential to doing Perl programming. Check out Appendix A to learn where to find resources such as books, online documentation, working programs, newsgroups, archives, journals, and conferences.

As you get involved in programming, you will learn the most important books, web sites, Internet newsgroups and their searchable archives, local gurus (experts in the subject at hand), and program documentation. This includes programming manuals (printed or online) and frequently asked question (FAQs).

Most languages have a standard document set that includes the whole story about the language definition and use. Perl's is included with the program as the online manual. Although programming manuals often suffer from poor writing, it's best to be prepared to dig into them. A well-honed ability to skim is a great asset. The Perl manual isn't bad; its main problem is that, as with most manuals, all the details are there, so it can be a bit overwhelming at first. However, the Perl documentation does a decent job of helping the beginner navigate, by means of tutorial documents.

Finally, I urge you, the beginning programmer, to find some experienced Perl programmer who can answer the occasional question. This may be your teacher or teaching assistant in a course, a coworker, someone down at the local computer store, or someone replying to your posting on an online newsgroup (there are newsgroups specifically for Perl beginners). Chances are that an occasional conversation with an experienced user can save you many hours of chasing deadends during your initial learning stages. Many programmers are happy to lend a hand or offer advice to beginners, there's a friendly and collegial atmosphere that prevails in the programming community.

Be warned, however: experts can become irritated at people who continually pose questions whose answers are readily available in FAQs and other standard documentation. You might sometimes see the advice to RTFM—acronym for Read The F(ine) Manual—in response to such questions. So do a little checking around in the FAQs before repeatedly asking for someone's valuable time.

(I can't resist the occasional anecdote.) At my first programming job, which I took to learn programming, I was stumped by a problem for which there seemed to be no obvious solution. I approached the person who had been cited as the best programmer in the laboratory. I carefully explained my predicament as he patiently listened. When I was done, he smiled and advised, "Be a man. Do it yourself." I was crestfallen and retired in confusion. But as it turned out, his advice was given with tongue in cheek, and he later approached me and gave me pointers that led to a solution.