I am like yourself - my first real program was written in Fortran, using punched cards for a Control Data mainframe, some 25 years ago. As far as books go, I have the Camel book (Programming Perl) and the Perl Cookbook. Based on other comments, I will also get Effective Perl Programming.

Other suggestions - look at people's code, read whatever you can, look at the writings of the truly expert (like Randall's Web Techniques Column).

Ken