Greetings fellow monks,

Alas, I have come to that particular point in my learning curve where I need to have a serious project to work on and fellow monks to associate with in order to learn more of this great art we call Perl.

In comes Sourceforge. I have been browsing this great library of projects that once were, still are, and soon coming. I have filtered by the great language, Perl, and I have come up with several projects that I might try to associate myself with. Specifically, I'm looking towards working with MP3 projects, but that's not really needed to answer my questions. I have two questions:

1.) Assuming I have a list of projects that I'd consider getting involved in. What kinds of questions should I be asking the current developers? I don't want to sound selfish, but I don't really want to work on a project that would die. But what types of things would I look for in order to determine that said project is, in fact, a healthy project (Aside from the obvious like its documentation, the community support and so on).

2.) Again, assuming I affiliate myself with a graceful project that I have selected using your answers to question #1, what kind of things can I expect from affiliating with a project? It seems obvious to me that I would inevitably learn something from the other developers. But assuming I'm not nearly as talented as they are (yet), would that cause excessive burden to a large project? Would it be wise for me to try to help with a project with my small amounts of skills?

So much to learn, and so few ways to learn it. Reading a community site such as this can only get you so far. I realize that I need to do something. It's just a matter of finding something to do.

--Coplan

In reply to Selecting a project for Learning by Coplan

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