It happened to coincide that last week I started reading some Perldoc things straight through in order to just blatantly broaden my horizons, as opposed to just referencing it for syntax as needed. Then I hit "Monk".

It is my perception that the crossover between good posting and authoritative posting happens in the Level 5 range. I havn't felt anything that I said was authoritative yet, and it will be another couple of months with the language before I feel that way about any but the 'newbiest' of questions. I speculate this will correspond with the time it takes to make Level 6.

-Lexicon

Well, I am but a few points from level 7 (Friar - or should that be fryer?) I consider myself a beginner. I can hack out some simple programs, but there is still so much I don't understand.

Once you think that you have nothing else to learn - that is when you will learn nothing else. Keep your mind open - and keep looking and learning.

I feel much the same way as you do, as someone also approching level 7.

I can write a perl program to do what I want it to do. But.... I still feel much like a newbie to programming in general, despite having been doing it for years now in some form or another.

And I feel this way despite seeming to have a fair knowledge of perl syntax, methodologies and intracacies, an idea of modules availible and some experience with a decentish selection of them and knowledge of how to get to most of the information I might need to do most of anything in perl.

However having never made anything other then tools, toys and projects for my own interest, desires or training, I feel I have not actually progressed to a truly 'useful' stage as a programmer.

So I spend some time on perlmonks answering people's questions. This I feel has been useful to me as searching through the docs for some obscure useage or module has expanded my perl knowledge. I don't always get the answer right. I don't always answer with the right detail, as furthur followups by other monks leave my feeble suggestions behind. But I still do help other people in their projects at times. But my own projects still feel like those of a newbie, with no true grasp of programming or perl.

I myself am closing in on Monk(5) and feel like a newbie. I've only had my login for 5 weeks but I've followed the site for close to a year and read a lot. I do feel like I have a good command of the language, but everytime I have a question and a search shows me its a 5 line fix it brings me back down to the newbie level all over again.

I think that says something about the perl language, that since there are some many more ways to do it, there are lots of elegant ways to things that gives it such a flexibility and wide array of uses that we all have a lot to learn.

"All I know is that I know nothing"

*~-}hotyopa{-~*

Don't know if it's kosher to followup on a three year old post, but I ran across this thread looking for advice on how to vote (I recently became and acolyte and I'm trying to figure out what the ground rules of thumb are for voting.) I definitely agree with mothra here. Your position in term of experience points bears little correlation to your actual knowledge of perl.

It's better to think of experience points as a measure of how long you've been with this site and whether you've used it as intended. On an ongoing basis.

Personally, I feel my level of Perl knowledge is quite high -- I've been paid to program in perl for about 9 years now and I've learned an awful lot in that time, but I don't feel slighted in the least at being just an acolyte. I haven't been with this site that long and my participation is sporadic at best.

That's my $0.02.

--DrWhy