CS 306/spring2011

The course syllabus is attached at the bottom of this page.

A little bit about the class and the language...

This is an extremely hands-on class.  There will be approx. 10 in-class lab days, and several homework assignments.  Students who take this class should be prepared to hack on lots of Perl code! 

Perl is a general-purpose high-level language and is known as an excellent choice for doing system administration automation, text processing, scientific computing, networked applications, and web programming.  A fairly accurate description is that Perl is the duct tape of programming languages - it's one of those tools where once it's in your toolbox, you keep finding new uses for it. 

Perl has its origins in the UNIX world and is a good language to know if you want to know more about UNIX, Linux, or what's under the hood of your Mac.  (Of course it works great on Windows too.)  It has no single style - it is most often written in either an imperative/procedural style like C or an object oriented style somewhat like Java.  It has been said that languages such as C were designed to make efficient use of expensive computer hardware while Perl was designed to make efficient use of expensive computer programmers - it can adapt to your individual style and preference.  Perl is a mature language that's been around a long time and has a large, active developer community.

After successfully completing this class, you will be proficient in writing intermediate-level Perl and will be able to use Perl to solve real-world programming problems.  Perl is used to process data in CIS' computer forensics lab and CIS IT, is used all over academia for scientific computing (e.g. genomics, bioinformatics, etc...), and many, many companies use Perl for system administration, business data processing and web frameworks.  It can be a great addition to your resume.

I have taught this class on several occasions since 2005, but this is the first offering since SP09.  If you have further questions, please contact me at fabrizio@uab.edu. 

Class File: 

syllabus-SP11.pdf