There Is More Than One Way To Do It

How I did it (not necessarily in this order):

• Minored in Comp. Sci. in college. Learned some CS theory, basic algorithms, and a few languages including C and Modula-II.
• A few years later regained the interest and bought the Llama book (merlyn's excellent book, published by O'Reilly & Associates, called "Learning Perl").
• Bought and read the Camel book, the Mouse book, the Ram book, the Alpaca book, the DBI book (can't remember the animal), the Cougar book, the Wolf book, the Owls book and a few others.
• Read every POD in the standard Perl distribution (except some of the OS-specific ones that related to operating systems that I never use)
• Read many if not most of the day to day Seekers of Perl Wisdom questions here at the Monastery over the course of the past twelve months.
• Dug in and researched answers to many questions, and began replying to SoPW questions. Read just about every question/answer ever posted in the Catagorized Questions and Answers section. Read most of the Tutorials listed. Followed most of the current day-to-day Meditations.
• Spent countless hours pouring over the docs for, as well as implementing solutions with the CPAN modules.
• Oh, and tinkered with every part of the language that has attracted my attention, and for which I've found the time thus far.

I still have a long way to go. There are so many different avenues to explore, both within the realm of Perl, and the broader realm of Computer Science. But it's been a thoroughly enjoyable experience. If I've rushed it, it hasn't been with the intent of "getting up to speed quickly", it's been a mad dash of enthusiasm tempered with a desire to be thorough and accurate in my learning; I've enjoyed every minute of it.

There's so much more to be learned... :)

Update: Woops, in my excitement, I just gave you the twelve-month approach. ;) Seriously, start with merlyn's Llama book and the Alpaca book (Learning Perl, and Perl Objects, References & Modules). Then move on to the Camel book and the POD. After that, choose books based on what attracts (or demands) your attention next.

Update 2:One more thing: Thanks for all the encouragement since I first showed up here, everyone!