An equally important question: how do you learn?

Some teachers (my girlfriend's a ski instructor) learn that different people learn very differently. Some folks learn by being taught the theory. Others have to see examples. Some want to follow someone who's actively doing what they are teaching. Others have to try to do things themselves before it sinks in.

I've learned something about how I learn as I've grown older.
-First, give me the context of what I'm learning: the view from 10000 feet if you will. Don't start at the bottom.
-Second, work down to a lower level and tell me how it works.
-Third, show me examples to help me when I make stupid syntactical errors and such.
-Fourth, give me incrementally more challenging tasks to try.
-Repeat until you know enough. So you'll probably repeat the above for most of your life / career.

Some books (llama) worked out great for me, because they teach the way I learn. Others (Oracle manuals) are more challenging, since there are few / no examples and no incremental learning - either you get everything right the first time or you're stuck for days.

I'm barely an apprentice monk, but following my path to my learning Perl has been very rewarding. Other paths could have caused me to abandon Perl <shudders visibly>. But from the postings, you can see that they were very successful for other monks. As they say, your mileage may vary.