It's only because of CGI that I learned Perl in the first place, and I suspect the same is true for many others. I had purchased Learning Perl out of curiosity, and it just sat on my bookshelf for more than a year. It wasn't until a huge CGI task was thrust upon me that I began to take it seriously and dove in. Of course, now I use Perl for anything and everything -- especially (with Tk) as a replacement for VB.

Let's face it, Perl may not be the only game in town for CGI, but it sure beats whatever's in second place. So CGI apps will continue to be the first serious stab at Perl programming for a lot of people, having to learn it out of necessity as I did. And if CGI is the major feeder stream of programmers to Perl that I think it is, "web script jockeys" will always seem preponderant: Perl is new to them, CGI is hard stuff for beginners, and Perl Monks is where they come for help.