I started using Perl seriously only about a year or so ago. One of the first things I did was to join the beginners@perl.org mail list. There are a remarkable number of experts on that list, and I was (and continue to be) impressed with their patience and dedication.

(I would occasionally surf PM, but much of the traffic here was over my head.)

As I became more familiar with the Perl community, I kept encountering oblique references to some Monumental Event having to do with Perl beginners.

I spent some time today doing some historical research, and decided it would be worthwhile to report what I found. While what follows is probably common knowledge among monks who've been here since 2001, other monks may want to know why it is that the Perl community is as friendly to beginners as it is.

There seems to have been a sea change in the Perl community that originates with this document on perl.com by Casey West.

You should read it, now. I'll wait.

Having read that, doing a Super Search for Casey West shows some remarkable comments on the article in PM. Definitely worth reading. (Apparently, NodeReaper is a lot more gentle today than in 2001!)

OK, so what? (the Meditation part)

When I started using Perl, my mistakes were obvious. But now I know enough Perl to make truly dangerous mistakes. And I'm still enough of a newbie that I can't always tell the difference between an obvious mistake and a dangerous mistake.

If I assume that the influence of Casey West's opinions continues to inform the interactions on PM (which I do) and that PM is full of experts (which it is), then XP can be trusted, and serves as an excellent way for me to discover the difference between silly mistakes and dangerous mistakes.

That is, the amount of XP assigned to interesting questions on PM usually far exceeds the amount of XP assigned to interesting answers. Therefore I can be fairly confident that a question with high XP indicates a potentially dangerous mistake, and that a question with low XP indicates a question that probably could be answered by RTFM.

XP of course is a fun game, too. I play it by upvoting as many good answers as I find on PM. It's the least I can do.

In reply to Some Perl history for beginners (by a beginner) by McMahon

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