A better choice for programmers wanting to learn Perl is chromatic's Modern Perl (http://onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/).
Why do I recommend "Modern Perl" instead? Because it: (1) contains new language features added to Perl in the last 9 years (2) covers how to use Moose for OOP (3) shows how to use new Perl 6 features in Perl 5 (4) clearly explains the right way to do things (5) covers how to write tests (6) demonstrates that the Perl language continues to evolve and is a modern and effective programming language
And in the end, "Modern Perl" shows you how to write maintainable and effective Perl code. Great book, and you can get the PDF for free here: http://onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/
First, a confusion: this book has nothing to do with Zed Shaw's Learn X the Hard Way series. (I have no idea if Zed ever heard the title even. He may have come to it - the title - completely independently.) This book predates Zed's series, and has a very different goal. Zed's book, as I understand it, targets novices. The difficulty in the title is that you must do all the exercises and learn from a lot of repetition and trying things on your own (as well as looking up docs, further examples, etc. online). The Downey book, on the other hand, is aimed at people with a programming or CS background who want to learn Perl rapidly. The difficulty is that he moves very fast and assumes you can handle things like a fairly dense Markov text generator by page 26.
Second, a lot of people say (assume?) that the book is out of date because it's from 2003. Actually, for its goal, I think that's wrong. If you are an experienced programmer who wants to rapidly learn Perl's core syntax, I think this is still a good place to start. You certainly might follow it up with Modern Perl or lots of readings in perldoc and perldelta, but the core syntax and features of Perl 5 have not actually changed that much I think. I can't think of any book that covers as much, with as many examples in such a short book. It's also very clearly written.
Yes. I haven't read not a single python book. "Dive into python", "Essential Python", LPHW was boring.
I recommend HOP for every programmer.
