My introduction to Perl was through CGI also. About 3 years ago I was helping some friends do a website and they had used items for sale that they wanted to be able to update, so I started with the thin blue CGI book, which didn't do a hell of a lot, but picked up Coriolis's Black Book and the Camel book and actually made the thing work for the most part.

Looking back, it's probably the worst code I've ever written, and someday when I get some free time I'll go back and rewrite the thing.

After doing that small CGI script, I did a blackjack simulator to gain more practice in Perl but ended up taking a course at the local community college.

The only problem I have now is that since I've learned Perl, I dream in code, and there is nothing worse than a bug you can't find dream or an infinite loop nightmare. : )

There is no emoticon for what I'm feeling now.