The more you know about programming, the better programmere you'll be -- provided you have good habits.

Perl doesn't enforce good habits on you unless you ask it to (-w, use strict), but most of the Perl gurus certainly do.

If you want to understand what's going on, get in the habit of reading good code. Check out CPAN modules, try to come up with your own solutions to posted questions, read about algorithms and do take some time to explore a few other languages here and there.

Once you see the same thing implemented three or four different ways (in different languages and by different people), the essentials will start to stick out, and you'll begin really understanding it.

Perl's a great language for beginners, because it's expressive, forgiving, powerful, and very scalable. You can do just about anything with it (though there are plenty of things you probably shouldn't), and you get the results back very quickly.

My advice is to keep learning Perl, but be prepared to branch off into other things if you want to be a serious programmer. The more tools you have in your belt, the better your solutions and the more problems you can handle.

In reply to RE: Disadvantages of Perl? by chromatic
in thread Disadvantages of Perl? by redmist

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