Competition is fine. But there's no need to be rude about it, in my opinion.

Had that post been along the lines of "here's some code I found on the web, let's golf it (and correct any errors in the code in the process)," I'd be a lot more comfortable with it. The problem is that the competitive spirit is being directed not only at the other people golfing, but to the brand new Perl programmer.

I completely agree. I'm just saying that the response may have been harsher than usual because of the competitive sport angle. I'm sure many of us have heard stories about ridiculously bad behavior by parents at Little League games. Of course, that doesn't excuse the behavior, but it may help explain it. For the record I downvoted that node and voted to reap it (though that was more a symbolic gesture since I don't expect it to get reaped).

Elda Taluta; Sarks Sark; Ark Arks