One key area to add in teaching Perl is about the Perl culture, and in particular :

• CPAN - what it is, how to use it
• The Perl community - user groups, e.g. PerlMonks
• Open Source - Benefits

For those not familiar with Perl, these can be big changes in thinking.

When I am planning some major code, one of my first thoughts is "How much of this has already been done and available on CPAN ?" This can often change my approach to the coding depending on what aspects of the problem are already available as modules.

I have found this quite different to the approach of someone who has been brought up with e.g. Visual C++ as a working language.
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Brovnik

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