Perl 6 By Example, Another Perl 6 Book

I'm taking a shot a writing a Perl 6 book. Let's see how this goes.

My working title is Perl 6 by Example, and I want to recycle the approach taken in Using Perl 6 to introduce topics by example. Contrary to the now abandoned previous effort, I want to introduce the examples in small chunks, developing and explaining them bit by bit.

I expect the result to be rather limited in size (maybe 70 to 100 pages), and not a comprehensive guide to the Perl 6 language, but enough to get you started.

Target Audience

The reader should have previous programming experience. I assume familiarity with conditionals, variables, loops and basic data types such as various numbers, strings and lists. Some OO concepts such as classes, instances and methods will also be assumed, but I will drop some clarifying words about how I use the terminology.

Process

I will follow roughly the same process as in my previous book: First I write blog posts about the topics I intend to cover, and later distill them into chapters.

When I have some significant portion of the manuscript available, I will pre-publish it on Leanpub, and start to sell it.

If there is a lot of interest, I might investigate options to publish it in print form.

The Team

Luckily, several people have offered to help in some form or another, typically by writing or proof-reading (in no particular order):

• [ptc]
• DrForr
• Coke
• tbowder
• AlexDaniel
• seatek

Knowing the warm and helpful nature of the Perl 6 community, it is likely that more folks will step up to help. Any help, as well co-authors, will be highly appreciated.

Other Perl 6 Books

Information on other Perl 6 book projects is rather sparse and vague. I try my best to keep informed about these projects.

• Laurent Rosenfeld is working on a book which is basically a Perl 6 version of Think Python. It is targeted at programming beginners, and has been accepted by a well-respected publisher.
• There are rumors that Larry Wall is writing a Programming Perl 6 book, and I wish that to be true. I know nothing about the progress or time horizon of that project.
• brian d foy has started a kickstarter to fund his project to write "Learning Perl 6". Since "Learning Perl" is a book focused on beginners with no prior programming experience, I assume the same is true for the Perl 6 version of this book, so I don't see much competition between his and mine project, and wish him luck and success.
• Ken Youens-Clark has written about metagenomics, a subset of bioinformatics, using Perl 6 example code.

Interested?

If you are interested in progress updates or milestones about my book project, please sign up for the mailing list below. It will be low volume (probably less than one email per month). I will also try my best to inform you about news of the other Perl 6 book projects.

Numerous signups will also boost my motivation to work on the book.