Re: A Reflection on Perl Monks

[cjf-II]

I'm beginning to lose interest in the site. Why? Because I find that I'm not contributing to the community as much as I would like.

First off, why would that make you lose interest? This site's (mainly) about learning Perl, not solely about tweaking the everything engine. Secondly, there are 50+ people in pmdev, 25+ editors, and 10 gods. That's a fair number of people to run a website. Maybe your attention would be better focused on other open source projects?

Because I'll admit: even after being around the site for 3 years and using Perl as much as I do, I'm nothing of a Perl guru.

So who's a Perl guru? Okay, now that you've thought of a few, think of why you consider them Perl gurus, what skills give them their imaginary status? Now do you have those skills? If so, move on to the next skill. If not, learn it.

Another thing to think of is: do you really want/need to know Perl that well? Do you really have to know every little detail, or just enough to get the job done well? Maybe it's time to learn another language (or another completely different subject)?

[theorbtwo]

You've got a good point, cfj-II. But another path to mastery: start from the top of the seekers of perl wisdom section of newest nodes, and go down to the bottom. Answer those that you can answer off the top of your head. Research those that you've got a clue on. And come back, and keep reading those that you have no clue on until somebody else answers. Do likewise on the CB.

Eventualy, you'll find that questions tend to move into earlier catagories.

And never be afraid to guess -- just make sure people know you're guessing. People didn't always know I was guessing, so I added the disclaimer below.

Oh, and I'm just tickled pink to be included on your list of people who made a difference around here, but I really havn't so much. I try to answer people on the CB, even if I don't really know what I'm talking about. I try to fix things that I see as broken, when I can -- normaly, I can't. I don't understand Everything, and I've submitted a lot of bad code to pmdev. Fortuneatly, tye has caught most of it.

---

Warning: Unless otherwise stated, code is untested. Do not use without understanding. Code is posted in the hopes it is useful, but without warranty. All copyrights are relinquished into the public domain unless otherwise stated. I am not an angel. I am capable of error, and err on a fairly regular basis. If I made a mistake, please let me know (such as by replying to this node).