Learning programming

[trickster]

How hard would it be for someone as me, who has no real programming or database experience, to learn to program in a language like Perl or SQL?

[tolstoy]

I'm pretty new to programming myself, but I find that SQL is not hard at all. Likewise PHP is pretty easy. If you're used to bash scripting you should be able to jump right into perl no probs. At least that's my experience of things.

[GnuVince]

I always suggest that you start learning Ruby or Python. Both are easy and fun.