Like Robartes, I also found Perl through sysadm'ing. I'd been using the normal unix stuff: sed, awk, grep, etc and could roll some fairly mean scripts - but they were convoluted, horrible to debug and horrendous to maintain or modify as user requirements changed.

And then I came across Perl - can't remember how, either through one of the Usenet groups or through an O'Reilly book - possibly the Camel. And all of a sudden, I'd found the perfect tool - I could do all of the stuff I wanted easily, the code was understandable, and I'd got access to all of this wonderful pre-existing code in the form of modules.

And that's how it was for a good number of years, basic reporting and the odd occasional file system utility ( I can't believe how long I got by before I found out about the likes of File::Found). Now I'm trying to expand on my understanding of how it can be used for much more. Luckily I stumbled across PM a couple of months ago, and thanks to the great community here I'm increasing my understanding slowly but surely.

I'm now running a website for my non-IT job, and I've learned stuff like CGI, SQL & the DBI interfaces, and I'm trying to get my head round OO, packages, scoping. I'm not certain that Perl is the perfect language for every situation, but I'm equally certain that there isn't such a beast but that Perl is coming pretty close for most of the stuff I'm involved in.