hmm... I was encouraged by a friend/collegue to learn Perl about 5 years ago. I had just started a job where I was part of a team responsible for managing a (geographically widespread) network of around 100 linux boxes.

Learning Perl seemed a sensible thing to do, although I admit I was intimidated by it. I didn't have any programming background to speak of, and I just couldn't get my head around the concept of scalars, lists and hashes. Seems silly now, looking back...

After skirting around the edges for about 3 years and basically learning nothing (I kid you not), I finally decided it _was_ time to get serious and learn - so I got myself a copy of the Llama book.

I think I read it from cover to cover about 4 times before I decided to attempt anything serious, and I really struggled at first (yes, I'm slow ;). But with help from the friend who originally encouraged me to get started (we still work together) things finally started to fall into place.

These days I'm quite comfortable with most tasks I attempt using Perl, although I still consider myself very much a novice. I guess that's one reason why I started hanging around perlmonks - seems as good a place as any to continue learning :)