You're a child; I'm 52. 8-) And have been programming for *sigh* 35 years.

Most of my work is in PL/1 on a piece of Big Iron, though I've worked on a few C++ / Unix projects and a lot of Perl / Unix projects over the last four years. Upgrading the skill set is, in a word, frustrating. The alternative is petrification, stagnation and death.

I've found that the debugger is my friend, as are a lot of old-fasioned print statements. I had the same problem with the Alpaca book that you did. Sometimes writing an even smaller program (focusing on the point of confusion) helps.

Best of all, though, are the Perl Monks. This site and the community here are absolutely incredible. As long as you've done your Due Diligence, someone here will be willing and able to help.

Keep smiling, keep programming. Programming is life!