For me personally, my boss on my first co-op work term gave me an outdated Perl script I needed to update and translate to Java. I said "I don't know Perl", and he handed me the Camel Book.

I found Perl somewhat odd at first, coming from a Java viewpoint. I was worried that loose typing would "guess wrong" and use a number where I meant a string or vice versa. Also, subroutine parameters being passed as a flat array was a little mind-bending.

But I made the translation. As I did so, I became increasingly astonished and then appalled by the size difference. The final Java was missing a major block of features that were deemed unnecessary, and it was still nearly 500 lines to the 180 of Perl.

So I learned from the Camel Book, and the PerlMonks Tutorials, as well as other threads on the monastery and of course the perldocs. I later read Higher Order Perl, and it broadened my mind with functional programming concepts. More recent forays into Haskell have done so even more, and I am now grateful for Perl's tasty blend of functional and imperative concepts.

As to my schooling, Perl has always been a dirty secret. They would never actually countenance teaching something so vulgar, but if you corner one of the profs they'll admit that it's an essential tool.

In reply to Re: The Road to Enlightenment? by bradenshep
in thread The Road to Enlightenment? by DigitalKitty

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.