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Perl Medic: Transforming Legacy Code
- By Peter Scott
- Published Mar 5, 2004 by Addison-Wesley Professional.
- Copyright 2004
- Dimensions: 7x9-1/4
- Pages: 336
- Edition: 1st
- Book
- ISBN-10: 0-201-79526-4
- ISBN-13: 978-0-201-79526-4
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Product Author Bios
PETER J. SCOTT runs Pacific Systems Design Technologies, providing Perl training, application development, and enterprise systems analysis. He was a speaker on the 2002 Perl Whirl cruise and at YAPC::Canada, and he founded his local Perl Monger group. A software developer since 1981 and a Perl developer since 1992, he has also created programs for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Scott graduated from Cambridge University, England, with a Master's of Arts Degree in Computer Science and now lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife Grace, a cat, and a parrot, at least one of which also uses Perl. He is the lead author of Perl Debugged.
- Cure whatever ails your Perl code!
- Maintain, optimize, and scale any Perl software... whether you wrote it or not
- Perl software engineering best practices for enterprise environments
- Includes case studies and code in a fun-to-read format
If you code in Perl, you need to read this book.
—Adam Turoff, Technical Editor, The Perl Review.
Perl Medic is more than a book. It is a well-crafted strategy for approaching, updating, and furthering the cause of inherited Perl programs.
—Allen Wyke, co-author of several computer books including JavaScript Unleashed and Pure JavaScript.
Scott's explanations of complex material are smooth and deceptively simple. He knows his subject matter and his craft-he makes it look easy. Scott remains relentless practical-even the 'Analysis' chapter is filled with code and tests to run.
—Dan Livingston, author of several computer books including Advanced Flash 5: Actionscript in Action
Bring new power, performance, and scalability to your existing Perl code!
Today's Perl developers spend 60-80% of their time working with existing Perl code. Now, there's a start-to-finish guide to understanding that code, maintaining it, updating it, and refactoring it for maximum performance and reliability. Peter J. Scott, lead author of Perl Debugged, has written the first systematic guide to Perl software engineering. Through extensive examples, he shows how to bring powerful discipline, consistency, and structure to any Perl program-new or old. You'll discover how to:
- Scale existing Perl code to serve larger network, Web, enterprise, or e-commerce applications
- Rewrite, restructure, and upgrade any Perl program for improved performance
- Bring standards and best practices to your entire library of Perl software
- Organize Perl code into modules and components that are easier to reuse
- Upgrade code written for earlier versions of Perl
- Write and execute better tests for your software...or anyone else's
- Use Perl in team-based, methodology-driven environments
- Document your Perl code more effectively and efficiently
If you've ever inherited Perl code that's hard to maintain, if you write Perl code others will read, if you want to write code that'll be easier for you to maintain, the book that comes to your rescue is Perl Medic.
On the Web SiteDownload all of the book's sample code from <www.perlmedic.com>.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Novel and effective tutorial in solid Perl Programming, By
This review is from: Perl Medic: Transforming Legacy Code (Paperback)
You can learn a lot from books (or so it seems), but you can't learn a feel for the language. I had read all of the O'Reily Perl books and found myself in charge of a large Perl project writing new code. I hired on a real Perl guru and he taught me a ton, in person, about how to write Perl as Perl and do it well. What amazes me about Perl Medic is how much of what the Perl guru taught me is in this book. It's as if I had the man by my side again.On it's face that makes it sound like you should pick up the book immediately. And for someone who is serious about Perl I think you should get this book. But there are still some faults. It could be a little better organized. And some of the common problems, like CGI scripts having embedded HTML, could be given more prominence and the text templating alternative given some more space. I looked in the tiny index for HTML::Template and found only two references, both of which were pretty short. In what is probably both a curse and a... Read more
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
One of the best Perl books out there, By
This review is from: Perl Medic: Transforming Legacy Code (Paperback)
A quote on the front cover of this book says "if you code in Perl then you need to read this book". That's a pretty bold claim to make. It made me think of the hyperbole on covers of books that claim to teach you to program in Perl in just a few days. But this book is published by Addison Wesley, who are a well respected technical publisher of technical books and the quote is from Adam Turoff who certainly knows what he's talking about when it comes to Perl programming. So in this case the claim isn't hyperbole. The book really is one that I want every Perl programmer to read.Perl gets a lot of bad press from people who claim that it encourages people to write unreadable code. Whilst there's certainly a lot of very bad Perl code out there I think that's more a sign that it's used by a lot of people who don't know how to program than a reflection on the language itself. And that's where this book comes in. It assumes that you are familiar with the syntax of Perl but that... Read more
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
A good book with a misleading title,
This review is from: Perl Medic: Transforming Legacy Code (Paperback)
While the "medic" metaphor recurs throughout the book, most of the material isn't directly related to repairing old code. Instead, this is a collection of best practices for new code. (The author recommends rewriting existing code if at all possible.) It ends up resembling another excellent Perl title, Joseph Hall's Effective Perl Programming. Good company to keep. Perl Medic has the advantage of being newer, and of covering a bit more material. The writing style is very easy to read, and the order of presentation works well. An excellent title for any intermediate-level Perl programmer.
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Online Sample Chapter
Test Now, Test Forever: A Philosophy of Perl Programming
Table of Contents
Preface.
1. Introduction (First Response).
2. Surveying the Scene.
3. Test Now, Test Forever (Diagnosis).
4. Rewriting (Transplants).
5. The Disciplined Perl Program.
6. Restructuring (The Operating Table).
7. Upgrading (Plastic Surgery).
8. Using Modules (Genetic Enhancement).
9. Analysis (Forensic Pathology).
10. Increasing Maintainability (Prophylaxis).
11. A Case Study.
12. Conclusion (Prognosis).
Appendix: Source Code.
Bibliography.
Index.
About the Author.
Downloadable Sample Chapter
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Chapter related to this title.
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