Still around, though I don't think I'd ever call myself "not a programmer". My elementary school decided to teach me AppleSoft BASIC when I was 8, and I took to it like a fish to water, so "not a programmer" has never really been an option for me.

I eventually found Perl by way of getting a Windows IDE at work whose editor had a vi mode, which I liked the power of, so I started learning vi, which lead to learning regexes, and thence to Perl in 1998 or 99. But I'd also been a regular for some years in alt.sysadmin.recovery for some years prior to that, so I was already familiar with Perl by reputation, even if I hadn't actually used it.