Im a telecom technician familiar with UNIX, ksh, bash, Nawk, & BASIC. I thought I was pretty smart until I picked up this "amusing, well written definitive guide to the language". Im pretty sure its in English, but I can barely make out a word of it. To be fair, this is the second Perl book that has showed me up. Maybe its not the book but the language itself, with its smug "theres more than one way to do it", patronizing "context sensitive, trying to understand what im saying", and pretentious "religious quality to the Perl community". I will learn Perl (Im actually already using it when it cant be avoided). And when I do maybe Ill talk all fancy and wear a smoking jacket and write Perl poetry that parses in Perl, and be able to understand something in this book. Until then its trial and error, looking at other peoples code, and trying to understand something in this book through the tears. Maybe Ill get the llama book.