A question about learning/schools.

[James White]

I have a young nephew who appears to be developing into a natural
geek/nerd/guru/whatever and as he learns I need to make sure that he stays
on the side of the white hats, rather than going down the learning path of
cracker/warez/illegal_downloading.

I am retired and my fortran/cobol programming experience is not going to
help him much. I have suggested that as a start he learn C++ to get in
the nitty gritty of programming and perl to get things done. (A joke, no
flames please). Fortunately I got him started on Linux rather than that
other OS that his friends use.

In my day learning was usually at a company's expense, or possibly at the
college level although that was usually fairly basic - about what you can
get from a book now. The company training is pretty much gone now.

My question for you younger guys, is where did you get your start in perl
or the current languages? Self taught, college, Internet tutorials, rich
uncle?
Thanks guys/gals
James White

"If you ain't stored your code in iron donuts, you ain't ever programmed"

[ZafT]

"James White" <wh**********@etcsa.com> wrote in message
news:pa****************************@etcsa.com...

I have a young nephew who appears to be developing into a natural
<snip ->
My question for you younger guys, is where did you get your start in perl
or the current languages? Self taught, college, Internet tutorials, rich
uncle?

I started by reverse engineering code while reading books. I'm a big fan of
the perl cookbook (O'reilly and assc.). If he wants to take a class, he can
take one at a community college - they are more likely to be up on perl than
many universities. But if he has natural talent, he will pick up the basic
pretty quick. Once you get started, all you have to do is give something a
try (a good try) and figure out what question to ask. There are plenty of
people here that have helped me with projects. The only prereq is that you
have to have tried like hell to get it to work, and then post your code.
Skip either of these steps, and you'd better be wearing fireproof gear,
because you can expect a flame. Nobody likes to write the code for you. But
as I said, there is plenty of help to go around. He can email me if he
wants some sample basic code to get started, but he can find plenty of that
on the web.

No rich uncle here....

Shane