I came to perl programming after programming for a few years (7-8) in c. My hobby then - and now, though to a lesser extent - was online gaming, particularly MUDs. Amongst the things I had done was work as a coder on a couple of existing projects, including one that is now becoming a 'standard' MUD type before going off to write one from the ground up on my own. 150 thousand lines of c code later, coupled with the lack of planning that usually goes with such projects I was struggling with a number of problems, particularly rogue pointers ;)

At about this time I got a job as a web programmer and started writing CGI scripts in perl. On a whim I tried rewriting my MUD in perl, jsut to see how far I could get. While I never finished the code, I managed to get an average of 90% reduction in code written, thanks to modules like IO::Socket and the like and ended up with a program that would confortably let 150 or so people connect and talk without any problems. This required about 5_000 lines of code. I was so impressed that I rarely write anything in c these daya ;)

$japh->{'Caillte'} = $me;