I learned Perl by:

• Staring at the manpage for Perl version 1
• Staring at the manpage for Perl version 2 (all 10 pages of it)
• Rewriting all my shell and emacs-lisp hacks as Perl
• Answering questions in comp.unix.shell with Perl
• Being on the alpha-test team for Perl version 3
• Reading through the updated manpages for version 3 very carefully
• Opening my mouth when Larry announced that he might write up some sort of additional documentation to say I'd help him with it, which eventually became the first Camel book
• Studying Perl very deeply inside and out while writing that first Camel
• Sending lots of emails to Larry
• Writing about Perl incorrectly, only to be corrected by Larry
• Writing a course for a california training company
• Presenting said course
• Turning the course into the first Llama book
• Creating a different course from the Llama book
• Presenting that course in front of tens of thousands of people over the years
• Turning that course and others like it into the world's leading on-site and open-enrollment training company
• Studying the "perldelta" manpage and diff -ru's of the sources very carefully as each new release comes out
• Rewriting the camel once, and the llama twice
• Contributing to the shiny ball book, and that OOP book from down under
• Writing the alpaca book
• Reviewing a dozen other Perl books
• Working for a dozen clients over the years as a Perl hacker
• Writing over 170 magazine articles
• Answering 3000+ posts here
• Answering an uncountable number of Usenet postings
• Answering dozens of perl-beginner mailing list posts
• Answering thousands of private emails
• Attending 7 TPCs and 2 YAPCs and nearly 20 GeekCruises
• Visiting roughtly a hundred different Perl Monger events
• Hanging out with the boards of TPI and PM after founding them
• Paying attention to search.cpan.org's "recent module" list
• Reading the more interesting module details from that list

And I still have a lot to learn.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.

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