I liked Perl for text parsing and that kind of work.. Used it professionally for about 3 years.

Two things i didn't like about it which i still don't

1. It's a conceptually huge language. There are several things to learn to be effective or you fall into the problem when the 10% that you use is different from the 10% that your teammates use. I found python attractive because of this.

2. I disliked Walls book. It was long winded and very hard to sit down with when I wanted to find something. I expected something like K&R but found it tedious and boring.