However, books are a slow way of learning a language, in my opinion, and they cost money. Good learning books are read only once (if you read your learning book twice, it didn't do a good job at teaching you, did it?). I tend to avoid buying books.

I enjoyed reading this node as I have been "Learning Perl" for a couple of months now, but am finding it difficult to get past the beginning stages.

Different people, have many different learning styles; my personal preference is to learn from books as this is the way I learn the quickest, but I have talked to friends who intensly dislike this method, they prefer to attend organized classes; or one to one training.

My preferred style of learning is to read a book once: and then to do some work. While I am trying to code, I will refer back to the book many times, especially when I am having difficulties understanding why my code is not working.

A good Perl tutorial (in my opinion) is well worth the money spent on it.

emcs

The dogs bark; but the caravan rolls on.