title: What constitutes effective Perl training for non-Perl developers?
body: <p>I've been working with Perl long enough that many of its idiosyncracies have become second nature to me.  When new programmers join our group, they frequently have little to no experience with Perl, and it's usually my task to train them (to the extent necessary).  I'd like to know what to focus on when training a programmer who is new to Perl but has experience with other languages (this question is meant to be language-agnostic, but most developers I've worked with have come from Java).</p>
  
  <p>A few things occur to me:  </p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>The proper use of sigils</li>
  <li>Referencing/Dereferencing</li>
  <li>Use of list functions like <strong>map</strong>,
  <strong>grep</strong>, <strong>sort</strong></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Is there anything in particular that you've found it useful to focus on when helping a programmer to transition to Perl?  Do you stress the similarities or the differences, or both in equal measure?</p>