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You can find me these days on my blog, working on FormSpring, or coding.
My Mission
I'm not a saint, but I feel like I have a good understanding of the language. Now I'm working on learning more to master the language, and hopefully contribute back to the community.
A while ago I uploaded my first modules to CPAN: Data::Random and HTML::FormHighlight. They're not wonderful modules, but they can get the job done. Unfortunately I've been really busy and haven't had as much time to work on them as much as I'd like. If anybody has any suggestions or contributions to those, it would be very welcome.
I recently read through Damian Conway's Object Oriented Perl and loved most of what I read. I would definitely recommend the book to those looking to learn more about the language.
My Testimony
I was first introduced to Perl in 1996, my freshman year in college. There was a job post to work on the University's web development team and prerequisites were a knowledge of HTML and Perl. I had used the web for a few years prior, but had never done any development to date. I went to the library and found a few tutorials on HTML and started working on a web site right away. After I got that up and working I got David Medinet's Perl 5 by Example (I would suggest one of the O'Reilly books to beginning programmers, but Medinet's was free for me and I didn't hear about the O'Reilly books until much later). I read through the book over Christmas break and when I came back the next semester I started the job.
The job probably hindered my learning of Perl for a while though, since the sys admin only had Perl 4 installed for a really really long time. I was still using local to declare variables, cgi-lib.pl instead of CGI.pm (to this day I prefer having all form variables in a single hash instead of using the clunky param() method), and wasn't even touching object oriented Perl programming. I was also learning off a previous programmer's spaghetti code, and Matt Wright's scripts. Blech...that was a nightmare.
Since then I've used Perl in most of my professional (and recreational) web development work. Since I started using Perl full-time at work I think I've been learning more and more.
I knew about PerlMonks for a while, but didn't register and start frequenting until a earlier this year. I really like what I've found, and regret that I didn't fully discover it a long time ago.
My Sins
I don't use Perl as much as I'd like to anymore, and I've been visiting Perl Monks even less :(
I really don't know that much about pack and unpack either.
I'm scared of merlyn (but in a good way).
I was scared of the Chatterbox. (Until I found a chatterbox Tk client at Perlmonks Related Scripts).
-----BEGIN PERL GEEK CODE BLOCK---- Version: 0.01 P++c-P6 R++M++O+++MA+++E+PU!BD C++D+S X+WP+MO---PP!n!CO--PO-o G+A-Ee-Ev+uL++w-m! ------END PERL GEEK CODE BLOCK------