Well, I am probably joing this discussion far too late (blame in on somewhat more important things, like our DHCP server getting upset). I have a few points to add, as someone who has been programming for over 25 years - and starting with good old Fortran IV - on punched cards, no less.

Any programming languange can be a suitable language for a person to learn programming on. The actual syntax and usage of a language is not what is important, but how to translate real world problems into a structured set of "rules" that accurately reflect the business problems, and how to design, build and test software that does the required job, is reliable, maintainable and so forth.

Be that as it may, Perl is a good introductory programming language, in that it is easy for new programmers to get something working quickly, and early in their learning cycle. Sure, there are many powerful capabilities with Perl, but all that can come later.

The important thing for programmers to understand very early on is the importance of good design, structured code, variable scope, etc, etc.

Two thoughts that I believe are relevent here:

1. Fortran programmers can write fortran programs in any language.
2. (and in response to Merlyn's Perl is intuitive) The only intuitive interface is a nipple.

Maclir

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