Well, looking at your experience it seems to me that you are not exactly a newbie yourself. And then again, I know what you mean. As someone who has only recently started programming Perl (after and with some strong coaching of BrotherAde - cheers mate!) I sometimes (too often really) haven't even got a clue what the questions here are about - let alone dare to answer one of them. But then, I'm learning, and reading the questions and the answers help a lot. I don't mind when someone - even if s/he is younger than I am - knows something better than me. As long as I can learn from them, grand.

But I think with confusers - and not just Perl or prgramming in general - it depends on who you're talking to. Compared to my Dad, who is not bad on confusers himself, I know very much. But compared to some of my friends - let alone the people here - I know very little. I suppose there is something else I know better than some other people (and if it's only the Bernese German language - being Swiss...). And even with something where I'm quite good at, I sometimes make the most stupid mistakes. Anyway, I think the point srawls makes is quite good: Often enough it helps to have a fresh set of eyes look at the code, they usually see a lot more than the set of eyes working on it. And if I had been programming for years already I might even understand the more complicated code on this site...

As for fitting in, there is a point where you realise that in fact there is almost always a place somewhere where you fit in - the point is finding it. And I think, this community is not worst place to try.

--cs