Have you ever filled out a job application and seen a question like this:
Rate yourself from 1-5 (5=expert) on your knowledge of Perl in a web environment (mod_perl).
And I can only recall what a college prof once said. He said that in any field, you have the following:
minor league
major league
starter for major league team
there are many people who simply sit the bench in the major league
all star
All starters for a team are not good enough to be your next A-Rod.
hall of famer
All all-stars dont qualify as hall of famers
legend
A Pete Rose only comes about once every 1 million all stars
And the problem with applying for a job is that you have to give this answer in a relative fashion... there are only so many Randal Schwartzes out there. I mean, how many people are truly truly legendary? Truly the creme de la creme?

I know enough experts to know that I am not an expert. Yet I know many people whose head is so far under the sand that they would confidently rate themselves as a 5 just because they are so out of touch with the Perl community.

So we have a dilemma. We have some clerical staff person with no knowledge of what they are asking me who coldly and clinically sorts the apps out and files metaperl over in the loser stack because he knows enough to rate himself as a 3 while Mister Matt's Script Archive get's to the next round of interviews due to a combination of ignorance of egotistical bluster.

complacency

Another trap of a question like this is complacency. The second that you start labelling yourself as good, you lose your competitive edge. There is a new breed of Perl all-stars. People like Yuval Kogman, Matt Trout and Stevan Little are replacing the former giants solely based on their active and useful contributions.

In reply to bush league, major league, all star, hall of famer. legend by metaperl

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