I've been a web designer for about 3.5 years now and have relied mostly on Windows products to do the heavy weight interactive stuff. I've always been squeamish about Unix. They say that when the student is ready the teacher will appear and BOY is CASTRO a good teacher.
Anyone who is criticizing this book obviously didn't read the "About this book" section and the "What this book is not" section.
Too many people buy computer books thinking that they can start in the middle and learn what it's all about. If you pick up this book, start from the beginning, do all the examples, utilize the EXTREMELY valuable resource of the book's website, (It has every example in the book, including the stuff that she says, because of space and time limitations, she can't go into in depth), you will walk away with the security and knowledge necessary to put Perl on your sites and learn more about it from the thousands of inferior books that choke the bookshelves of countless bookstores.
This book does EXACTLY what it says it does, which is RARE for computer books, and has made it possible for me to make MORE money at what I do for a living. Isn't that the bottom line in web programming?
Thank you, thank you, thank you Elizabeth Castro. I'm in your debt.
