You have been given some very good advice. I just wanted to let you know you are not the only one who has these feelings. I attempted to learn Perl 3 times, given up in frustration each time before it finally started to click. I had no prior programming experience and just kept telling myself "You are not a programmer, so quit wasting your time." For some reason, I just kept giving it another shot. I'm very happy I did because I have done some amazing things with Perl and I've gained respect (and a few promotions) at my company as a result of some of the things I wrote in Perl. I still only consider myself an intermediate Perl programmer, but I can now whip up a fairly powerful script in a few hours.

Because of Perl, I decided to pursue a programming degree, and I am only one semester away from getting my BS in Computer Science. 10 years ago I would never dream I would be at this point I am today. My final programming class is an Advance Programming in Java (don't worry monks, I still love and will continue to use Perl), which is something else I never would expect I would be doing.

The best thing you can do is to keep writing code and visit back here often for help and to learn. Without a doubt I would have given up learning Perl that last time if it wasn't for Perlmonks, to which I'm forever grateful.

Take care,
Dru

In reply to Re: Enlightenment and Frustration by Dru
in thread Enlightenment and Frustration by chexmix

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.