Do you have an application in mind? This is important. If you have the nagging feeling that you just need to learn Perl, find an application, tool, or game you can dig into and get started. Generally asking how to do X in Perl around here is going to be a lot more fruitful than simply learning Perl. A lot of people fall into Perl due to drawing the short straw at work. Others are compelled to it from something less definitive. If you're in the latter category, I agree it can be a little harder to break into it unless you have something that generates the external motivation. You don't have to answer it here (though I am curious), if you could create a tool to do something, what would it be? It really comes down to having some work to do and getting done with Perl.

Some general examples of "tools":

• system administration (e.g., monitoring, cronjob, etc)
• something to drive a GUI (e.g., Tk)
• munging data (log files, input data for something scientific)
• a tool to help manage the contents of a local database file
• a web application, done the right way
• a social media feed monitor that emails you when your ex checks in somewhere

etc...

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