The language is
Perl, not Pearl, and it, too, has a lot of web sites:
http://www.perl.org
http://www.perlmonks.org
Now, here's a few pointers:
- Just about any language you can name (except those from Microsoft
) is going to have an implementation on Linux ... for free, and it's gonna be good.
- ... but you might have to install it. (In the case of Perl and Python, though, it's probably already there.)
- The very best way to learn any language is: look at some code! Surf to the language sites and poke around for tutorials. Poke around your own system for files that represent programs written in those languages: blahblahblah.py for Python, and .pl or .pm for Perl.
- "Prepare to be amazed," also prepare to be
, and above all... "don't panic!(tm)"
I don't care who you are or what languages you've learned or how many times you've been through this,
but... the
first thing that's gonna happen is
the mind explosion.
"The mind explosion" is
that moment when everything in your mind and body fairly screams at you:
"OMG! I'm sunk! It finally happened! This
is the thing I'll
never be able to learn! My three-year-old nephew
can do it but OMG, there's no way
..."
These things, too, will pass.
Beer helps.
(In fact, beer helps
considerably...) 
And so, you study a lot of code. Then you study some more code. And you try .. cautiously .. a bit of
your own code .. and, well-l-l-l ... let's just say that you need to do this next to a light-pole of known height to see if
when your code blows-up it does-or-does-not clear the pole. (Start a competition. Calculate the trajectory and measure exactly how far the ones-and-zeroes fly. Put it on YouTube...)
