Find small tasks that you can accomplish. Like any large undertaking, learning a new language is a process. Approach it as such, with both short term tasks to keep your confidence up and longer term goals that will be highly rewarding.
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If you are already proficient in another language, look for programs that are well suited for porting to perl.
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If you are a beginning programmer, search out simple beginner's tutorials and work through them until you fully understand them.
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Play with the language. Like web programming, check out CGI. Scraping pages more to your liking? There's WWW::Mechanize. Have uses for automating ftp/ssh/etc? Check out Net::FTP and the like.
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Speaking of modules, become familiar with cpan. Many wheels have already been invented there, which will save you the trouble.
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And then just spend time here. Pay attention to those who have been around (such as Grandfather, who gave some excellent advice already). Most of what I've learned about perl I've learned by watching, listening, helping where I can, and looking for problems that I could use perl to solve.
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Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
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Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:
<code> <a> <b> <big>
<blockquote> <br /> <dd>
<dl> <dt> <em> <font>
<h1> <h2> <h3> <h4>
<h5> <h6> <hr /> <i>
<li> <nbsp> <ol> <p>
<small> <strike> <strong>
<sub> <sup> <table>
<td> <th> <tr> <tt>
<u> <ul>
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Snippets of code should be wrapped in
<code> tags not
<pre> tags. In fact, <pre>
tags should generally be avoided. If they must
be used, extreme care should be
taken to ensure that their contents do not
have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent
horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor
intervention).
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Want more info? How to link
or How to display code and escape characters
are good places to start.
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