I agree completely with this. I love Perl, so I can always find reasons to recommend it. But I do know that it's not something that everyone needs to learn

To the original poster, I'd like to pose a question: What is your goal in learning a programming language?

• Are you just doing it for fun? (Perl is a good choice)
• Are you doing to start learning programming so you can use it for a job in a while? (Perl might be a good choice, if you expand to other languages later (note that I don't know of a single college which teaches Perl as a first language -- there are many reasons))
• Are you hoping to use it to get a job now? (Perl's probably not the best choice for this, try C instead)
• Are you going to use it solely for web applications? (Perl's a good choice)

In general I think that without knowing your purpose, it's impossible to recommend one single language. And I think it's difficult at best to recommend a series of languages. But if I missed this explanation in the OP, please try to be gentle with the cluebat -- it's still early. ;)

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