I started my foray into Perl in ~2001 when I started my job as a network engineer at an ISP. I had never heard of Perl before that. The predecessor that I took over for had written (looking back) a really shitty, redundant "application" to do the management of clients in what some might say is Perl 4 code.

I quickly realised that automating most of the sysadmin duties out of the way so I could engineer my core network peering via BGP was critical. I picked up a "Learn Perl in 21 Days" book off of a shelf, and practised everything in it. Two-arg open it had, and no mention of strict, my or anything. I mastered the simplicity of that book in about four days.

I quickly grew fond of Perl, writing up scripts that automated basic things, as to rid myself of sysadmin duties so I could focus on what I loved; networking.

Wasn't long before I found PerlMonks, and for eight years, I lingered around as an observer. Why I didn't join, I'll never know. Over time, I did start taking part in the newsgroups and email lists, then one day in 2009, I either saw a question that I could answer, or had a question... I can't remember. (I had been an active member in many other forums, particularly cisco-nsp, NANOG, and numerous FreeBSD lists).

In retrospect, of course, I should have joined earlier, but I didn't. Not long after I joined was the whole hack fiasco. I stuck with it. I started answering questions that I could to give back. I absorbed the criticism given to me in my mistakes, which was crucially valuable in how I approach things today.

Due to the people of PM, and the culture of PM itself, I believe that I am a more genuine person online, am willing to admit mistakes everywhere, willing to correct others (politely), and willing to apologize when I've been an asshole.

To me, Perlmonks is a place where we can learn, have fun, get angry at each other, but at the end of the day, we're all here for one reason... to help the newb while helping each other.

No matter how much one knows, there's always more to learn.

Thanks to all those here (way too many valuable people to mention personally), the p5p team, the pumpking (SawyerX at time of writing, took over for Ricardo Signes in the not-so-distant past), Larry, and everyone else who has had any part in aiding and abetting the Perl community by answering questions, writing distributions, writing books (special shout out to merlyn) or just throwing their two cents in.

Cheers,

-stevieb

ps. Back when, I'd claim myself as "not a programmer". Although I still am "not a programmer", looking back, the most memorable aspects of my technical career are the CPAN contributions I've made, and the work I've done to further the progress of Perl programmers, old and new.

pss. This post isn't perl5 specific; love goes out to the perl6 crew all the same ;)