My scripting experience back then came from BASIC (and limited Bash)

I think what impressed me first was the for LIST syntax. And the metaprogramming with eval and `backticks`

I had prior experience with TCL for a job, and Lisp for Emacs, but don't remember much from this experience.

Bash has actually a lot of hidden features which are badly documented (it took me years to find out functions were possible) that's another point where Perl/perldoc shines.

My first Perl scripts looked a lot like bash, I even shelled out with backticks when I didn't know how to implement things in Perl.

Perl was good in slowly phasing in. (Problem is: Some people never left that get it done phase...)

I remember stumbling over map and grep wondering WTF these are needed to.

And I immediately got bitten by missing function signatures and prototypes.

sub func() {...} didn't do what I was expecting it to do...

And I ignored strict, I still have productive scripts which need to be adapted.