I first started learning Perl in my high school Website Development class, in my freshman year. The teacher covered CGI with Perl in the last few weeks of the semester, and the notion of truly programming a Web page struck a chord in me--so much so that, when the final exam was assigned (create a site for Krusty Burger from "The Simpsons" in two hours), I implemented it as a Perl/CGI app.

From there, I bought Learning Perl (Second Edition--that's what they had at the time) and read it on a cruise. Yes, I learned it without having a computer handy. I eventually got Camel II (III hadn't come out yet) and read it.

I spent a year or two hacking Perl for CGI before I started doing serious work with it. I don't really remember how I found PM, but it proved to be an excellent resource, and for a fairly long period was the site I spent most of my time on.

I eventually made an effort to get involved in the Perl 6 development work, and wormed my way into a position of some significance. I also tried to learn about Perl 5 internals by hacking on Perl 5. Suffice it to say, that project is still in progress...

Even today, though, I still don't know the whole language. pack() and unpack() are mysteries to me (my Perl Geek Code says that I pack and unpack my suitcase), and I'm still constantly looking up all sorts of nonsense in the docs. I've never used most of the system-specific stuff, like getpwnam(). The list goes on...

=cut
--Brent Dax
There is no sig.

In reply to Re: Learning Perl? by BrentDax
in thread Learning Perl? by katch

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.