You've posed a really good question. Here is how I did it. I tried reading Learning Perl first. I got through the first couple of chapters but I, admittedly, am an impatient reader when it comes to learning things.

I am self-taught in *everything* I know about computers, programming, admin'ing, securing, etc. The fact is, that being self-taught is not a difficult thing to do if you are curious and know where to go to get the information you need. Literally, hundreds of thousands of people have put long hours into documenting how things work. So, the information is out there.

I have a pretty big library of books. O'Reilly has been the recipient of my cash many-a-time. So, what I do is I get my reference material available. Then, I find a reason to code something. You know, I get a job or a task that I could code. Then, with all my gumption, I set out and start to code it with reference material in hand and irc connection to openprojects. Another thing I do is I hang out in places and watch what people say. You can learn a lot just reading peoples' comments. I like to try and help people out too. When you teach what you know, you learn more. I was able to get my boss to allow me to teach a beginning Perl class here at work every Thursday for 9 weeks. A lot of people are really getting a lot out of the class but *I* have been learning more about the theory of Perl from it which helps me to know more about how it works internally thus improving my coding skills.

In the end, it is all subjective. Everybody has different ways of learning. One of my co-workers learns best by actually reading the whole book first and then trying to code something. I simply cannot do that. I don't learn from it.

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- Jim
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