I'm one of the select few who learned Perl on the Amiga. I've developed Perl apps for both Linux and Win32. The Amiga has an OS that's sort of like a cut-down Unix, and there are very many ports of Unix tools available, so the transition to Unix was very easy for me to make.

There are a fair few problems with using Perl on an Amiga; the ports have often been patchy at best (the last widely available pre-compiled version before 5.6 was 5.002), but I still managed to make my way through most of Learning Perl without encountering any real showstoppers. Those that I did find were with features that just plain don't work (fork being the most notable) and modules that assume facilities that can be taken for granted on Unix.

The point being, the ease with which you learn Perl is going to comparable regardless of the system it sits on. Learning specific modules and techniques may be less easy or impossible.

Personally, I feel that if Perl on Unix is a bicycle, then Perl on Win32 is a bicycle with training wheels, the brakes slightly wedged on and the front forks sawn halfway through; in some ways it's more restrictive, in others it can be a little more dangerous. It will still get you where you want to go.
"sir, you are charged with being inept in charge of an analogy. How do you plead?"

Unix is probably `easier', in that that is the OS Perl was originally designed, something that still shows throughout the language. However, if I can learn Perl on an Amiga with an operating system released in 1992, you shouldn't have any problems learning it on Win32.

-- 
flay, here to learn

In reply to Re: Linux vs. Windows for Learning Perl by flay
in thread Linux vs. Windows for Learning Perl by OzzyOsbourne

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