I didn't learn Perl until I was 15. Maybe this is "early" for some of the people here, and maybe it's "late" (take premchai21, for example). I don't think it hindered me to learn it at that age.

I'd been using BASIC on a Commodore-64 since the age of 10, I think. Then some JavaScript around 14 or so. C++ didn't work for me -- it was far too strict and rigorous.

Perl opened doors for me. Perl allowed me to use my brain, and not C++'s idea of a brain. It let me do things my way, which ended up being the Perl way.

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Jeff[japhy]Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker.
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