I definitely don't qualify as an "old-timer", having joined PM in 2010 (but I had used Perl since 5.6 which was in 2000 and had been following PM in a read-only mode for some time).
I started programming in Basic and Assembler on a Commodore 116 when I was about 13, then discovered Borland Pascal on my father's PC XT. I didn't study programming, though, I graduated in logic and mathematical linguistics (close enough?). Spent 11 years in corporations and startups before returning to academia. Perl still pays my bills.
map{substr$_->[0],$_->[1]||0,1}[\*||{},3],[[]],[ref qr-1,-,-1],[{}],[sub{}^*ARGV,3]
