I'm glad you're improving. However your "best Perl Programmer" comment reminds me of a story.

A woman I know recently moved from a large city to a much smaller one. She has a job, and her boss complimented her by telling her that she was the best programmer she had seen. She was depressed about this because she realized that he was probably right, and thought this was sad. You see, she doesn't think of herself as a good programmer because there are so many others she knows that she thinks are better. But she admits that she's probably the best that he's seen.

So the moral is that while you should try to learn from this person because he is the best you know, don't treat what he says as gospel. There are a lot of people out there who are a lot better than he is, and if you want to continue improving, you're going to have to figure out a way of learning from them.

(Random suggestion: have you considered doing a non-local class? From Connecticut you can commute to Boston or New York, both of which have plenty of classes to sign up for.)

(Random note: my wife interviewed for residencies not long ago, and Yale liked her quite a bit. I already didn't like the idea of living back east, but what clinched it was that I looked at the local job market and saw fairly poor pickings. After discussion we ranked Yale fairly low and didn't wind up going there.)


In reply to Re^2: Where are future senior programmers coming from? by tilly
in thread Where are future senior programmers coming from? by tilly

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