Well, it was five years ago today that I joined this on-line community, as a direct result of an interview with Damian Conway in the pair Networks Insider newsletter. Having learned Perl more or less on my own, my education was broad but full of holes.

I've heard it said that there are four stages of expertise:

• Unconsciously incompetent
• Consciously incompetent
• Consciously competent
• Unconsciously competent

That translates to

• No idea what I'm doing, and don't know any better
• No idea what I'm doing, but know there are better ways
• Some idea of what I'm doing, but know are better ways
• Some idea of what I'm doing, and don't know any better

Or, once you know good habits and they're ingrained, you've arrived -- you write meaningful comments, your code is structured, you use CPAN whenever possible, your code has tests, you generally have a clue.

After five years I have reached stage three -- consciously competent -- and continue to strive towards stage four, where I will live and breath Perl, and not even think about avoiding the bad mistakes and bad habits.

Perlmonks is a vital part of my ongoing education in the world of software development and the open source philosophy. I'd be much further behind without it.

So thanks to all the monks here, and to all those who work on Open Source projects. Here's to another five years, and another five beyond that. Cheers!

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