Probably for some things, yes. Obviously a lot of Perl commands are direct replacements for Unix tools (no surprise, I believe that was Larry Wall's intent). But perhaps a large part of the learning is the difference between a GUI background and a CLI background. If you were a heavy DOS user at one point, I'm guessing the whole thing would be like learning new words for similar concepts-- of course DOS wasn't originally a multi-user multi-tasking deal (was it? I never used it until I loaded Perl on a Windows machine). I've always found Perl to seem like a perfect blend between old Apple II/C-64 era BASIC and Unix. I remember similar feelings when first encountering HyperScript on a Mac in 1988, finally, a way to tell my Mac what to do rather than pointing at it and grunting, er, clicking.