Due to the number of subjects there is not a single grade you could send people to. You can be an experienced developer with several big projects under the belt and still know nothing about unix/windows/mac/xxx 'cause you've spent all the time using xxx/mac/windows/unix. Likewise you may have spent the whole time using graphical UIs and IDEs
or you've started with a prompt and are used to CLIs and text mode interfaces. Either is possible and neither should prevent you from starting with Perl. Or even just make it harder to start with Perl.
There is not a single path of learning nor a single goal. And your geekcode would have to be much more complex than this. Even if you kept it on topic for PerlMonks :-)
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And your geekcode would have to be much more complex than this.Of course, and I thought I was being facetious. The best approach is to give as simple and clear answer as you can, assuming the other person will understand. Then if they give followup questions, determine their skill level by the nature of the question. The one followup question that I always get, about Perl being a commandline line program, that makes me cringe, is " oh, it's DOS". I usually just say yeah, it's a suped-up DOS. :-)
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> Due to the number of subjects there is not a single grade you could send people to.
As I see it, there's only one subject that's required here - or in almost[1] any Net.place that has technical achievement as its goal: you need to be Net-savvy to do well. It's a social skill rather than a technical one; primarily, it's the ability to not violate the group standards - the social grace, if you will, that's necessary to fit in without making too big of a splash. A humble newbie who has done what little Net searching he was capable of and who presents his question in a pleasant manner, especially if he shows that he's done his work and is now at the end of his knowledge and ability, will usually find a whole abbey full of Monks to clue him in and lead him in the right direction - whereas someone who just needs a tiny clue and has a dozen years of Perl experience but comes across as a raving, arrogant jerk is going to encounter nothing but a hard time. People will intentionally withhold information and jerk his chain. I've seen it happen.
I don't think that anyone here is into chasing away the poor benighted clueless newbies; in fact, given the generous breadcrumb trails that I've seen laid out by people like BrowserUk, Grandfather, and many others, I'd say that this is one of the friendliest places on the Net. But it also militates against the arrogant and the willfully obtuse. Frankly, I think it strikes a good balance - and that's one of the major reasons that I like it here. :)
[1] "Almost" because there are many places on the Net where the idiots outnumber the pros. It's always September, somewhere on the Net.
--
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. -- HG Wells
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