A little reflection

[deprecated]

I realized several weeks ago that the seventh anniversary of my joining the monastery was coming up. I began writing what became a pretty large missive (which I am not going to post here) that could simply be summed up as "perl has given me more things than a job."

True enough, I was hired around the same time I joined (and started posting some idiotic questions and answers). Through perl I came into contact with Postgres, and as I flexed my new "muscles" on both those fronts, the depth of my understanding for Solaris and Linux increased. The military has a term: "force multiplier." A multiplier is what it sounds like. A device that provides an advantage to a force, while having advantages which outweigh disadvantages.

Perl is a force multiplier. To use perl, you must learn. I cannot be more more clear than that. Perl will teach you, whether you like it or not.

You can do what I did, and make a career of all the things perl taught me, or you could use it as an academic toy (purl on irc.perl.org being an example).

It's powerful stuff. My current involvement with perl is far removed from the trenches, yet I still find I need it to perform certain tasks (such as poking at RT's database). I don't even know what versionn of perl we have installed, because frankly it is so ubiquitous, the tracking thereof would be difficult. Further, while the perl6-lang list and other places had long-lasting arguments about who got what character and what something should do.

But, I feel strongly enough about this to swear.

Guys, it's still fucking perl. Perl is good.

And I owe an inestimable, even indescribable debt to the users of the Monastery helping when I needed it. I try to give back now and again, and find that every question I come across has at least two correct answers.

You're (you oldsters) wonderful. Thank you.

[zentara]

Being in the Christmas spirit, I gave you all the XP allowed. Although it's laudable that Perl opened many new doors for you, it dosn't for everyone... all I got from Perl was some recognition and some stiff hips from sitting in front of a monitor for hours and hours. But it was worth it for me too, because it widened my knowledge of what computers are really all about. Without that insight, I would still be a pathetic Microsoft Windows dependent junkie, dowloading countless exe files to do simple tasks, paying for some, and fighting trojans and virii all the way. Perl led me toward freedom and improved creativity.

[perlostitute]

I share your feelings. For those last couple years that I have been writing in perl, I have learned the most. I cannot speak about this forum as I am totally new here, but Perl is definitely the love of my life.

I especially like those sigils. In other languages, you can never tell which variable is a scalar, and which is an array etc. But with perl it is spanking obvious.