in reply to Master in Perl?

When you stop trying to master it?

That has a nice ring to it, but I'm at least mildly serious. A novice tries to write Perl code that looks like other languages he knows. An apprentice works Perl idioms into his code, and a journeyman uses the idioms correctly. A master stops noticing any of that and just writes code.

See also The Tao of Programming for a humorous take on mastery, which isn't quite as humorous if you know what you're doing.

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Re (tilly) 2: Master in Perl?
by tilly (Archbishop) on Feb 23, 2001 at 07:49 UTC
    It seems that most programmers stop as rank (emphasis on rank) amateurs when they are satisfied that they know enough for their needs. In fact I suspect that a programmer who has stopped trying to master the art is probably not very good...