And, I know some of our members are the younger generation as well.. tips on what got you started in Perl or other languages would be very much appreciated.
My first programming experience was seeing my brother using gwbasic for school when I was about (I guess) 9 years old. I found myself reading, copying and changing their listings. After a while, I tried to create my own programs. For a few years, AUTO, LIST, RUN, LOAD and SAVE were my life.
When we got qbasic, at first I used it just for the help file it had, but I soon figured out some things couldn't be done in gwbasic. The concept of not having line numbers was new to me, and I continued using goto. I then discovered SUBs, FUNCTIONs and structured programming using WHILE. Without knowing why, I tried if I could rewrite my programs so that there wouldn't be any goto in there.
I guess I was 12 years old when I tried C++. I had a copy of Borland Turbo C++, and the only thing I liked was the color highlighting. It wasn't long before I gave up C++ and went back to basic. QuickBasic, because it could create .exe files. I had been using compilers and linkers for gwbasic, but they didn't like qbasic code.
QuickBasic was enough for me, I thought. But then, in 1996, I learned to use Visual Basic for Windows. It took a while before I understood the basics of event-based programming.
When I was 15, I installed Linux and was looking for a programming language that ran under Linux. Still frightened by my C++ experience, I first tried to find a Basic-like language, but failed in finding a good one. In the library, I found some books about Perl, and it seemed to be installed on my system. I started using it, and felt comfortable with it. I continued programming in Visual Basic for Windows and even tried the fossil called Visual Basic for DOS 1.0 just for fun, but again and again I found out that Perl had HUGE advantages over Basic. As I got more familiar with Linux, I also learned more and more Perl. With but a few exceptions, I haven't touched Basic ever since. Perl is a programming language that perfectly fits my needs, and it lets me code the way I think.
Many ask who taught me all this. Books, online manuals and a lot of other online resources have.
Since a few years, I've been using IRC, but I learn more by asking where I can find the answer than by asking for the answer itself.
2;0 juerd@ouranos:~$ perl -e'undef christmas'
Segmentation fault
2;139 juerd@ouranos:~$
