Yea I'd agree about not touching Perl. It's powerful but this is disadvantaged that by the fact that it is hard to read - lots of symbols, compicated syntax, which means code you wrote last week you'll forget how it works and spend time getting to know it again all over. Java is quite nice to learn though and can be used to do just about everything - from running websites, to financial computers, to games on mobile phones, to set top box TV systems.