I learned perl by accident. In January of 1997, I chucked my previous career, and went back to school to learn programming. For 6 months, I did little but study C++ and HTML, play Doom, and work out. In April, touched based with a friend who was working for a Silicon Valley startup. He told me that he might have a job for me in August.

When August came, I sent him a resume, did a phone interview, and was hired at a small startup company. Rich showed me to my cube, pointed me at some perl code used for monitoring servers, and told me to learn it. Armed only with the Camel Book and the knowledge that I knew zero perl, I dug in.

Over the next few months, I learned how the code worked (connect to a socket, send a query, parse the response, report the result), and both expanded and improved it. Five years later, I've forgotten 90% of the C++, but I'm still doing perl every day.

-Logan
"What do I want? I'm an American. I want more."