Extreme Perl

This book is about the marriage of two compatible yet unlikely partners. Extreme Programming (XP) is a software development methodology that enables users, business people, programmers, and computers to communicate effectively. Perl is a dynamic programming language that lets an XP team embrace the inevitable change caused by effective communication. Perl is the fixer and doer of the pair, and XP is the organizer and facilitator. Together they help you build robust software applications efficiently.

Like any good marriage, the partners of Extreme Perl support each other. For example, XP asks business people to write acceptance tests, and Perl lets the business people use their own language and tools for the tests. Much of Perl only happens when the program runs, and XP asks programmers to define what is supposed to happen in unit tests before they write the program. In this book, you’ll see other examples where Perl reinforces XP and vice versa. This mutual support system is what makes Extreme Perl applications robust.

This book invites Perl programmers and their customers to take a fresh look at software development. Customers, and business people in general, will learn how XP enables customer-programmer communication for efficient and flexible requirements gathering. Programmers will see how XP’s focus on teamwork, incremental testing, and continuous design allows them to take pride in their craft. The numerous examples demonstrate Extreme Perl in action, including the development of a complete, end-to-end application in the last chapter.