Perl Programming - Should I learn it?

[stevenmcconnon]

couldnt hurt... learn it!

[Jonesie]

It's tough to answer your question without knowing what your future plans are - what is it that you want to do?

Perl is mostly useful for web development, GUI (Graphical User Interfaces), and a lot of financial and practical applications. It is a scripting language - good for network programming, etc.

If you want to program video games, you might want to consider looking into C++, Python, or Java as well.

Perl is definitely a good language to learn because it borrows from other languages and can be used for a lot of different applications.

It's going to be tough at first - the key is persistence, and definitely starting off as early as possible - good for you for knowing what you want to do and taking the steps to do it! Most of the greatest programmers started young!

[michael h]

I am 16 years old and I feel that Perl will be very useful in my future plans. Should I begin learning this now or wait? Will it be easy, medium, hard, impossible for me? This would be the first language, other than ASM51, that I am learning. Is it a good starter?

I want to learn Perl because I hear that it can do practically anything. I have a book called "Learning Perl" aka the "Llama" book. Will this book help or should I just give it back to the person?

Please give your opinion about if I should learn this, if it will be hard, and anything else you would like to add.

[Paul]

Learning Perl is a good idea - it's very useful - but if you have a choice and a clean slate then I'd be inclined to go for something a little more up-to-date in this general category of languages, like Python or even better, Ruby.

[vchen]

I'm 18 currently learning Python for a hobby. One of the many guides I read online says the programmer will have to be versatile in more than a language in the long run, so it doesn't matter which language you start off with. With that said, Perl is an excellent 1st-try language. Apparently Perl's great for writing small, simple scripts and just getting the job done. Python, on the other hand, is geared for more complex programs. Whatever the case, they're both great languages. Some people argue that python is more readable and generally easier to learn. Really though, just by reading Llama, I'm sure you'll find that Perl is just as readable and easy to get into.

[vchen]

I'm 18 currently learning Python for a hobby. One of the many guides I read online says the programmer will have to be versatile in more than a language in the long run, so it doesn't matter which language you start off with. With that said, Perl is an excellent 1st-try language. Apparently Perl's great for writing small, simple scripts and just getting the job done. Python, on the other hand, is geared for more complex programs. Whatever the case, they're both great languages. Some people argue that python is more readable and generally easier to learn. Really though, just by reading Llama, I'm sure you'll find that Perl is just as readable and easy to get into.