I've said this before: being a monk is about being committed to follow a path, not being among the most popular or vocal or wisest in @monks. If you're sincerely following that path, you're a part of this community.

So, contribute when you can. But don't let yourself fall into a rut of shy self-deprecation, either. Don't be so self-critical that you're paralyzed from posting anything just because there might be a better way of doing something. That may be true, but unless it's genuinely awful, broken code, and assuming no one else has posted the exact same thing, there's value in posting it, both for any feedback you get and because there's no harm in seeing more ways to do it. (Hell, if it is genuinely awful code yet you think it's decent enough to post, that's an excellent reason to post it - you might never learn different, otherwise, until it's too late.)

Even if you sit thinking "well, eventually, someone will come to the same realization that I did, and post my approach to the question, so I might as well not bother contributing" - if that's true, turn the question around, and ask if it doesn't matter who posts it so long as it's posted, then why not be the one to do it?

And if you can't contribute very often any other way, you can still vote for posts that deserve it. Esp. novices who may, like yourself, feel uncertain about their posts and their position.

-- Frag.


In reply to Re: One's place in a Perl community. by frag
in thread One's place in a Perl community. by graq

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