I think I count as a casual, self-taught programmer. I'm formally trained in genetics, I knew of Lincon Stein before Perl, and I informally picked up programming (BASIC and Pascal), a long time before Perl.

I came into Perl from HTML, like many, Perl was the "thing" to use when writing CGI, and so with the help of the Rat book and CGI I was away.

I'm currently reading through Object Oriented Perl for the second time to see if I can get the hang of it this time. I have no problem using an OO module, I even grasp the concepts, I just have no hope of writing OO at the moment.

Perl has a reputation for being both easy and obscure (!!), and I think the problem is that OO seems even harder. I think OO just puts people-in-a-rush off - "I don't know enough OO-Perl to know if it's hard, but it looks hard, so I'll carry on doing what I'm doing now, 'cos it works..."

My humble thoughts, I suppose I one of the many with broken world views, please help me.... ;)