I can tell you this, from years of experience. You can read every book written, mull every FAQ, and ponder every newsgroup, but until you actually start writing code, none of it will make a lot of sense.

Along this line, trying to learn a language without a project in mind seems to be futile. The best way that I've found is to pick something interests you, that's not too complicated (for instance, don't start off by trying to write a Perl Monks Monastery script), and that will hold your interest for a while. Maybe something like a catalog for your CD's or books, or a phone number/contact database. Start small. Think about how to break the project into phases. Begin with a data entry method. After that (seems) to work, worry about storing data to a file or database. Then think about creating reports, or making the data available via your brower.

Don't forget that not everything you do in Perl has to be browser related. Thousands of scripts run every day that never see the light of Netscape (For instance, I have a script that reads my weather station every 10 minutes, and stuffs the records into a database. A different script displays the weather).

Don't be discouraged when it doesn't work, but don't beg for help before you notice you mistyped the word 'print' as 'rpint', and got a compiler error.

These are all what I consider to be basic maxims of learning any new langauge, be it Perl, C, Forth, or assembly.

--Chris