I didn't have a huge problem picking up Perl (It's like Othello: a minute to learn, a lifetime to master), but when I started programming, I just couldn't understand the concepts of programming itself (mostly, I kept trying to figure out where the variables were physically kept...sigh).
You mentioned that this person has done Cobol, but are you sure that they really have programing experience? If they don't understand programming, you have a much bigger project than if they don't understand Perl. If they do understand programming, it's a matter syntax and familiarity.
Anyway, I used SAMS' Perl in 21 days, and it really worked out to about 14.
-OzzyOsbourne
