IMO, Perl is great as a beginning, and a repeat language. I started out programming in Perl (and for what it's worth I am still very much a beginner) and I have never regretted that choice. I have found my computer science classes to be much easier having learned what I did in Perl, as it was a great basis of introduction into the way of thinking a programmer should have. I would recommend merlyn's book Learning Perl, as I have read it at least twice, and it was a great starter source. After you read the Llama, I read the Camel (Programming Perl) and frequently use it as a reference whenever I need to solve a problem (I can't tell you how much that index of commands helps me).

I know absolutely nothing about being a SA, but I'm sure you can take up Perl as a spare time kind of habit, and become a good SA and coder over time.

Good luck and -w, use strict;
work it harder make it better do it faster makes us stronger more than ever hour after our work is never over.

In reply to Re: Re: Beginning Perl for system admins by tretin
in thread Beginning Perl for system admins by jjohnson

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.