Maybe this is just a rant, but...

I started *seriously* teaching myself Perl about a two years ago and I immediately signed up for as many Perl user lists as possible in hopes that I would learn by osmosis...this of course did not happen. So I picked up The Camel and read it cover to cover. Ok, so I knew more than when I started, but I was by no means a Perl Coder. So then I decided maybe a book that was geared more towards teaching beginners was in order so I picked up The Llama and I finally felt like I was on my way to becoming a real Perl Coder!

Soon I was writing Perl code that was meaningful and worked! I was soon eager for more. I wanted to become a better coder, write cleaner, more efficeint code, so the quest to build an extensive Perl library continued. While I was nose deep in my studies I was still paying attention to the various Perl email lists that I was/am subscribed to and began to notice a pattern. There was an alarming large number of people posting to the various lists that were basically asking the people to write their programs for them.

My first instinct was to answer the various posters with *attempted* solutions to their problems, but most of the time more experienced coders would submit solutions ahead of me. No big deal. Yet something kept nagging at me. I began to wonder why these people thought they could post to an email list and receive a complete, functioning program without doing any of their own work. Espcically when I've taken the time to read and work through the various books and examples that are easily accessible to anyone who cares to look. I kept thinking "what the H#!* are they thinking??" Most of the answers to these questions are answered and covered in detail in any number to the O'Reily books.

Anyway, like I said this is mostly just a rant, but I was wondering what you Perl coders thought about this and if I am just imagining this *pattern*.

-hieronymus