Chose a book on C++ because of a new interest in making games. However, the book I read was very poorly written, so I wasn't able to make anything more than trivial programs. Should have learned C first though..
Use it almost exclusively when bored in class. Usually spent my time writing programs to solve mathematical problems in order to increase productivity. Anything else I wrote was some sort of game for playing with friends.
Wanted to learn it before, but discouraged by others saying it resembled "line noise". After finally trying it, it's safe to say that Perl is actually quite readable yet compact if one takes the right approach. I like it.
Only started to learn this as I familiarized myself with Linux. Reading The C Programming Language by K&R also helped me become serious about learning it.
Used it for a bit. I thought it was a breath of fresh air compared to TI-BASIC, mostly because I was actually coding at my computer rather than busily tapping away on my calculator. First-class functions make it really great for reusing code.
