I started with BASIC (TI 99/4a, Commodore, Apple, and other such systems in the early 1980s). About 1985 or 1986 I got my first Intel-based system with DOS and so started using GWBASIC (at least I think that's what it was called back then). Then one day my dad brought home this magazine he was getting for free at work called "Dr. Dobb's Journal" and suddenly I realized that the world was a much bigger place :)

From there I learned pascal and then after dabbling with that for a year or two I taught myself C by translating the programs in DDJ from one language to the other. Then I went to a university and learned about this wonderful new language called C++. Then in the early 1990s I started playing with unix-based systems and learned vi, sed, shell, awk, and all of the other nifty tools you get with unix.

In 1992 I got a student job at a research organization where they used perl for data processing and so I had to learn perl. I had only just bought the AWK book a few months earlier, but once I started hacking perl, I don't think I ever touched awk again except for the occasional one-liner or to maintain some one else's code.

In 1993 I bought the pink camel and I have been using perl regularly ever since. I didn't transition to perl5 until 1996 but I've thoroughly enjoyed perl since the moment I started seriously programming in it.