Hi Monks :). OK, not sure if this is the appropriate section to ask, it seemed the only possibility to me given the options, and I do know as a newbie I've probably made some poor decisions in previous posts, but since my attempt is both sincere and dedicated, I accept my mistakes as par for the course, so please forgive if this is the case here.

I have a concern about the approach I'm taking in learning Perl, and was hoping to perhaps get some advice on whether or not the concern is warranted, one, and what to do if it is thought to be so, two. I am a mother, I work full time and have have quite a hectic life. I will begin school in summer 2009, however at the moment, I am self teaching, until I begin moving towards my bachelor's in comp science. As a result, I find myself, at times, going a week, sometimes even two!, without coding or studying at all. Granted there are plenty of times when I get stuck on a project, glued to the computer, my eyes glaze over, and someone has to literally come and pry me away, but as I said, I do find myself going a few days to a week or so without even looking at any of it.

Now please make no mistake, the dedication is there. I love coding and am fully prepared for all the good and bad it will come along with (my spouse is a developer, and he "goes into the basement" quite often). It's just that, in order to spend a substantial amount of time studying every day, I would have to seriously restructure my, and my children's, entire life, and I am willing to do this if needed, however I'm not sure where this stands in importance to my actual career, development as a hacker, ability, skill and any possible problems that may result from this approach down the line.

I know I can't be the first coder with a family, these worries, and this situation, so I thought I'd ask your opinion. Is a complete restructure of my approach a serious benefit in the pursuit of a career in this field, or is it kind of like riding a bike, once you advance to the next skill level, you're pretty much there? Of course we're all individuals and no one can answer this for me, or make the decision for me, I'm just curious because I do respect your opinions very much, as all of you seem to have achieved greatly in an extensive knowledge of the language.

Please note, I'm asking in concern about my eventual outcome, the type of coder my education is likely to produce, not so much about the time issue. I of course realize I'd have to make serious changes to get it done faster, but, again, this is not my focus at the moment. Also, please do not doubt my dedication because of this, I certainly have it abundantly. If I had two of me, the best one would be stuck to the computer non-stop, trust me! ;)

UPDATE: I just wanted to thank all of you for so many helpful, encouraging and realistic replies. I appreciate each and every one of you who commented on this, as I gained something significant from each reply. Thank you so much, I knew I loved this Monastery for a dam good reason!

In reply to Structured Learning of Perl, Important or Not? by koolgirl

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.