Programming: Where should I start.

Ok, I'm gonna learn to program. I've decided on Perl (due to what environments I have access to at school (perl, python, ruby (on rails?), lisp), the fact that I don't need to compile, and the use of boilerplate code in perl vs. python)

What is the simplest and BEST free online tutorial out there for someone who understand html but not very much else (I'm apparently to stupid for this: http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2000/10/begperl1.html)

>>6
That, and memorize a hundred or so different bits of punctuation, learn when $_ is and isn't implicit, be able to distinguish subtle differences in the context of a function that magically make it return an array or a scalar, look up damn near every stdlib-looking function because they act almost exactly the same as in C, but with some fun and exciting minute difference. You also need to contort your brain in such a way that you honestly believe that constructing complex nested hash tables and references to references of arrays is just as good as, if not better than, real objects, class attributes, and multidimensional arrays. Then and only then will you be completely fucking brainwashed a true Perl hacker.