The first thing you should know is that hacker != h4x0r. For a brief synopsis of what it means to be a hacker, see How to Become a Hacker by Eric Raymond.

When I hear "Perl hacking", I think of writing programs in Perl, not necessarily hacking perl itself. (In that sentence, 'Perl' refers to the programming language, and 'perl' refers to the interpreter that runs Perl programs.)

Why be Just another Perl hacker,? For me, it's mostly laziness. Perl makes the easy jobs easy and the hard jobs possible (as it was designed to, according to St. Larry). It's also fun. I learn new things about Perl all the time, especially reading this site.

So if you'd like to be a Perl hacker, keep reading PerlMonks, write your own programs, post your code for others to review, and you'll be well on your way. Have fun!

-- Mike

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