###My background... Well, I had my first encounter with Perl in the Fall of 2000. It was not pretty.
Ironically, this was pretty much how my first experience with Perl went, years ago now. I swore I would never touch that crazy "rules for the exceptions to the rules" language again. Oops.
At the time, my only programming experience was Pascal taken as a high school student. However, I really wanted to learn programming better, and was told that Perl is the language to learn to get things done. But, I hated Perl the first time because I had a huge issue with debugging when it won't let me do things because I missed a period or something important, which I was unaware of.
This is going to sound like a dumb response, but this seriously does just improve over time. Eventually, you just find yourself making less trivial mistakes. Then one day you notice your anticipating problems and fixing them before you even try to compile. Of course, before this point I once spent almost a day debugging code where I had omitted a single space. Just give it a little time and patience. It really will come.
Then, I learned a little bit of Java. I liked Java with all its structures and class less than I did Perl.
I'm Java certified and use it in my job pretty regularly, but at the end of the day when I come home and program for me, I do it in Perl. I understand what you're saying, Java feels very rigid at times. Perl's more fluid and creative, probably its greatest strength and weakness.
I've had Object Orientation drilled into my skull from all that Java work. Generally though, when I just want to get something done, I do it procedurally. Don't get me wrong, OO concepts and planing out your code are very important, but it's not something you need all the time. Like any tool, you should choose when to use it.
Now, I'm trying to master Perl to an extent where I feel comfortable enough to create things I want to create without feeling at a total loss or frustration to call a computer stupid for not doing what I had written. Also, I'm using Linux. So, to answer your question about studying the basic concepts of command-line programming with Perl, I think that I do know a little bit to test my codes, but I do have my Perl reference manuals beside me to look up things whenever necessary, as I am always learning something new and cool.
You're taking the right steps. I've been using Perl for what seems like forever now and both Programming Perl and the Perl Cookbook are laying right beside me. Be patient and practice. The rest will come, I promise.
James
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