A few suggestions, all boiling down to reading:
- Read any basic CS 101 textbook. You can pick them up real cheap at college bookstores.
- Read all of tilly's meditations. Then read tye's, brian_d_foy's, and any other major Perl name. You can SuperSearch limiting on a person's name, just Meditations, then (at the bottom) exclude replies.
- Read all the Apocalypses, Synopses, and Exegeses for Perl6. Not for the Perl6 stuff, but because Perl6 is going to be an extremely syncretic language. As you hit a concept you don't fully understand, Google it.
Remember this - CS is the science of algorithms, especially algorithms as implemented using a binary-logic computational machine. Everything else is built upon that.
Being right, does not endow the right to be rude; politeness costs nothing.
Being unknowing, is not the same as being stupid.
Expressing a contrary opinion, whether to the individual or the group, is more often a sign of deeper thought than of cantankerous belligerence.
Do not mistake your goals as the only goals; your opinion as the only opinion; your confidence as correctness. Saying you know better is not the same as explaining you know better.