Thanks rspishock,

I too left a job (a 10 year job that had me dabbling with Perl) quite a few years ago. I promptly left the language, but a couple of years later came back to it despite it not being required.

Step forward more years, and now I do Python coding as about 30% of my job. I stuck with Perl though, particularly because I like the people in the community, and the feedback I get on the code I write (as is the Perl way, I can tend to be lazy, so I utilize Perl experts to help me with code in other languages that might even just barely relate to Perl ;)

Now, I have absolutely no professional ties to Perl in any which way, but I do maintain a decent list of CPAN distributions while patching others, solely so I can remain knowledgeable enough to hang around here while providing something back to the community that imho got my career started (even though I'm literally not a programmer by trade).

I've learned recently that there are others like you and I that are 'out of the game' but are still hanging around, and that gives me a pleasant feeling.