japhy wrote:

> When did I realize I had a talent for using Perl? When did I figure out that I knew how to do things
> efficiently? When I looked at my first programs, and shrunk them tremendously.

I think you hit the nail on the head there. I think the best indication of progress for me is when I look back at old programs and see how much I've learned since I wrote them. It feels good to turn 20 or 30 lines of old code into five or so.

I also like seeing remnants of C influence in older code (e.g., using for ($i=0;$i<@arr;$i++) to walk through an array) that I've since replaced with Perl idioms (foreach is my friend).

-sacked