Preface

It's several weeks that I have this meditation in mind, but I had not a lot of time for even lurking PerlMonks. Now I'm ill, and didn't went to work, and when I have come back to the monastery I read this node and many of its replies. So I decide to lay my thoughts on the keyboard

Being a monk: why you'll love it, why you'll hate it

Why you'll love it

• You learn something new from many nodes you read;
• you learn something new even about arguments that are not strictly perl, but are related to it (e.g.: UNIX shells, Databases, network protocols, security...);
• You can exchange ideas with other Perl programmers, which is an invaluable benefit, especially if you are the only Perl programmer around your town;
• You get good advice from experienced perl programmers;
• You get good advice from experienced perl book writers;
• Someone will say you taught him/her something new, and it will make you happy!
• Some node of yours get a high reputation, and you'll love it;
• You write a node saying something that you think is obvious for everyone, and in spite of that you get a lot of reputation from it;
• You see your XP go up and up, and you see yourself becoming a monk, friar, abbot..., and you'll be proud of it.

Why you'll hate it

• You'll get bored of replying to questions that are FAQs;
• you'll get bothered from discussion that aren't strictly related to Perl ("Hey! We ain't MySQL-Monks, are we?");
• You will look for someone to collaborate with your project and find none;
• You'll ask questions that are fundamental for you, hoping to get good advice from experienced perl programmers or perl book writers... and you'll get none;
• Someone will downvote a node that you wrote thinking it surely was a very good reply and that it would give you a lot of reputation;
• Some node of yours get a negative reputation, and you'll hate it;
• The best node you ever wrote, in your opinion; the worse node of the Monastery, in the opinion of nearly any other monk;
• Yor XP is stuck and you had your last "promotion" a long time ago, and this makes you sad;
• You found some monks that downvote your nodes saying "You don't understand this and that of Perl", and the real thing is that you understand this, and that, and those much better than them: they simply fast-read your node and didn't get the question;
• You will find some monks so stupid to downvote every node you'll post

Ok, kill me now! :-)

Ciao!
--bronto

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