Having come out of a Java background to become a somewhat respectable Perl programmer, I find myself disagreeing somewhat with merlyn.

You must be this tall to get Perl to work for you, rather than wrestling with it (for programs longer than, say, 50 lines).

I also agree with davorg. Elements is a great introduction both to Perl and programming. And really, most of the battle is figuring out ways to phrase your request that will make sense both to the computer and to you.