Here's how I learned Perl. First, I started playing with BASIC on Apple II, TI99/4A, and IBM-PC computers in the early to mid-80's. In about 1984 I began high school CS classes, first working with BASIC, and later moving on to Pascal.

In the late 80's, I began my college career as a CS major. There I got an introduction to CS theory; Big-O notation, modular styles, OO programming, etc. I was introduced to Modula-II, C, and C++. Partway through my time at the university I changed my major, but still finished with at least a minor in CS.

That gets us to the 90's. After some time away from all the fun, I picked up a book: Learning Perl. I read it, as well as Mastering Regular Expressions. But then distractions set in; starting a career, getting transferred around the Western US, getting married, etc. Now we're into 2003.

In 03 I picked up a newer revision of Learning Perl, as well as the Camel book, and a few others. I remembered immediately why Perl had grabbed my interest a few years earlier. But this time I really started loving it. Within a year I got through a number of Perl books, and additionally became interested in following questions and answers here at PerlMonks. When people asked questions here that interested me, I started seeing if I could come up with a sane answer. It became addictive, and sort of helped motivate me to dig deeper. I read the entire Perl core POD. Maybe I didn't understand 100% of it, but I read 100% of it. The O'Reilly books were really helpful too. It became a real hobby for me. It was like working on puzzles, but more rewarding.

Programming has never been a career for me; I've already got one. But it's been something I'm highly interested in, and have been for some time.

So when I see you asking people to give you test answers and not bother you with all this 'learning stuff', it makes me wonder why you're even bothering with Perl at all. I do it because it's mentally challenging, and fun for me. You seem entirely disinterested. And when I feel someone is disinterested in one of my passions, I'm not all that motivated to expend mental effort on that person. Not when there are others who are gobbling up the learning aspect of it, and actually appreciating the whole thing.

We're really not interested in whether you pass your class. I took to Perl because it was a very interesting language to me. Your grades are not anywhere on my list of motivations. I'm here because I love exercising my mind with Perl, and sharing with others when I'm able to contribute to their learning experience as well. Prerequisites are time and desire.

If you decide you'd like to learn Perl, let us know.