I've been working with Perl on and off since 1997 and similar to many I've been disgusted by some of the code I've come across created during that time. Perl has come a long way even since version 5.0.0 and is quite a different character these days. The problem I've had with recommending the language is that unlike C which really hasn't changed(at least to me), Perl has slowly evolved but many of the books in print still point to the older version. While Perl is excellent in maintaining backward-compatibility with earlier versions, knowing and learning the "modern" versions has been a more painful task then it should be. I think this book changes that.<p>I just spent about 30 minutes skimming through it. It's only 260 pages in clear and articulate English. Should this be THE new Perl book? Could be...I think this coupled with Effective Perl Programming that came out a few months ago are great for getting onboard or returning to the world of Perl. Hats off to you Chromatic for your work on this.<p>There may not be any reasons to learn Perl if you already know Ruby/Python/Tcl/Lua but you certainly won't be worse for it if you do. At the end of the day, it's just another tool and I love having access to so many great ones these days.