I (academic background in physics, but visited only few courses in CS) got into it myself late in life. As an autodidact it's all too easy to miss some relevan

I (academic background in physics, but visited only few courses in CS) got into it myself late in life. As an autodidact it's all too easy to miss some relevant background information. E.g. Perl's "local" variables made sense to me only after learning (much later) Common Lisp with its dynamic variables (partly because documentation around CL tends to be more thorough).