I was then shocked to find that the person had no experience with either the Unix perl man pages, perldoc, or Shuck on the Macintosh. It was surprising to me that his professor had apparently not bothered to mention these valuable resources. Oh sure they had purchased, through their campus store, the O'Reilly book Learning Perl which was a great text to be using. But the prof had not yet mentioned the wealth of online docs, how its organized, etc.

Why is it that Perl books geared towards beginners, notably Learning Perl do not discuss pod and where to find the pod pages? As an author of such a book couldn't you provide your readership with a little more shelf life or longevity if you mention things like "be sure to check the online documentation that came with your Perl installation. Here is how to do just that..." or is it the case that designed absolescence in the publishing world is to be considered a good thing?