This document discusses programming for biologists and introduces Perl as a widely used programming language for biological problems. It provides examples of simple Perl scripts to store and manipulate DNA/RNA sequences, such as transcribing DNA to RNA. More advanced uses of Perl include parsing BLAST outputs, simulating DNA mutations, and working with databases. Perl is beneficial for biologists due to its ease of use, rapid prototyping, portability, speed and availability of bioinformatics modules.