With a language like Perl, I don't think that day-to-day problem solving tasks limit what you can learn about the language. Thinking through the ways of doing things, thinking about why you need to do it the way you are, even down to writing the actual code and debugging it - all of these subconciously advance your knowledge and ability, your "comfort factor", with the language.

From a maintenance point of view, I personally find script maintaining quite a dull task, although it's something I try and keep my interest up with by trying to learn from code that (most of the time) someone else wrote.

I think that limitations on learning are purely a psychological thing - if you have a mindset that's willing to explore and consider new things you encounter, and learn from problems and mistakes, then you'll never stop learning new things..

As far as knowing everything about a language goes .. we recently had an interesting discussion on a similar/related theme: Self-improvement and TMTOWTDI. The conclusions people came to were quite varied, though *grin*.

I find the presence of a community invaluable, both as a support forum for problems I encounter with the language and as somewhere that I can learn an immense amount about areas of Perl I haven't/wouldn't have considered if someone hadn't asked about it, or it hadn't come up in some other way.

From my point of view, the distinction between a virtual and "real" community are purely theoretical. The same benefits can be attributed to both (with the possible exception of social contact *g*).

-- Foxcub
A friend is someone who can see straight through you, yet still enjoy the view. (Anon)