I know I really need to start using more tools. I am not a programmer but can tweak here and there and learn by seeing/testing. Therefore I have been trying to read books on Perl and LWP, however my mind starts jumping at all the things I could accomplish once I learn this stuff and I end up getting no where (I am really thinking I have Attention Deficit Disorder - ADD - seriously, but another issue)
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I would like to learn more, but right now I just want to use free and paid tools and am wondering want the top or best tools around are. I am talking mini tools that help you do the little but very important, repetitive, and time consuming things. Are they free or do they cost money? I have no problem with spending money for good tools, I just would like a list to start with of some of the most useful things (not necessarily the exact tool, although that would be fine, but mostly just ideas). Thanks
Learn to use CPAN, since it saves a lot of work. there is a module to do almost anything.
On the LWP and Perl front, the book of the same name by O'Reilly is excellent. Its only failing, IMHO, is that it doesn't introduce WWW::Mechanize, which makes use of LWP but handles all the repetitive tasks of grabbing a page and scraping links. Spidering Hacks has a couple of chapters about that, and is also a good reference on web scraping. Both of the books are pretty perl-newbie friendly.
Sean
