Nysus, I have read many of your posts with interest because I am in a very similar situation as yourself, with the difference being I am doing the 55 hour work week and raising two children path. Perl and shell were my first languages.

I can certainly identify with reading the same documentation repeatedly. I discovered quickly that to accomplish anything of value I needed three or more reference texts on the subject. Each author would emphasize points differently, and thus I could find illumination "by committee". This practice led me to frequenting the sale tables at all of the local bookstores.

Buying sale books was an economical coup, but I soon learned the danger: they put books on sale because they suck. Oh yes. I swear to you I spent four hours trying to figure out the if; then; fi construct in shell because the bastards forgot to mention fi closes an if clause. It took me quite a while to stop using symbolic references in Perl because the first book I had with Perl in it used them like they had healing powers.

Looking back, learning Perl as a first language can be dangerous. Perl certainly gives you the rope to hang yourself. I sometimes wonder if I would have been better served learning C first instead. The argument being that you should learn Latin before you learn other spoken languages. Now that I know some (childish) C, I have a much easier time. I also appreciate Perl much more!

Although it deals with Unix, I have found the Loginataka has much wisdom for the larval programmer.