http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=478179


in reply to Starting with Perl

I did a stack of web administration tasks using the CGI module whilst learning Perl.

I think it's a good approach! Now I use MASON which is much easier, personally, but it's very difficult to set up.. plus it is a nightmare to debug scripts using MASON.

Doing the use CGI approach gives you the functionality you need (getting parameters from web forms), plus it allows you to debug your scripts from the command line if necessary.

Most time, when spent learning a new language, is getting used to common pitfalls, and having access to a command line environment really assists in this way, because you can always just run perl -cwscript and see if there are any compilation warnings.