Hm. Seems all the comments to date are from twenty-somethings. Well, let's see what a few more years adds to the conversation, if anything.

I've been working on computers for around twenty five years now. My first experience was with a teletype connection to a local (at the time) community college. I used it to play TREK and other games; I also used to to poke at the various libraries on programming and so forth. I never had a lot of time on it, but something stuck. I was 14 and the big argument of the day was whether or not it was wise to let TI-30 calculators into Math classes.

A few years later, the high school I attended purchased a TRS-80 Model 1, complete with the newly shipping cassette drive for off-line storage. I quickly devoured the BASIC manuals and started poking at its version of ASM programming. The next year, they bought three Model III's. The Math teacher, placed in charge of the nascent computer lab, would frequently rail at a friend and me regarding the huge amount of time we were "wasting" to write programs to play games, to do simple little graphics, ala the "Star Wars" titles (this was 1980; "Empire" was imminent), and writing D&D helper programs (Character Generators, Dungen Generators, Dice Rollers, and so on). He felt computers should be used for real work. We ignored him and continued to poke at them as best as we could.

After graduating (and a few adventures I won't detail now), I managed to land a very entry level database programming/PC Support job at a Federal Agency. It was here that I learned the wonders of being online. I parleyed an account at the local university, taught myself just enough Unix to use FTP and discovered wonderful treasures like the now-defunct SIMTEL20 archives and USENET. I would scan the archives like crazy, downloading free compilers, tutorials, sample code, and so forth (including copies of the infamous Phrack papers that I carefully hid from management). Spent way too many hours digging through what I found and reading what I could learn.

After graduating college, I (eventually) took a job with a commerical software company (detailed previously) and found myself a sysop of their CompuServe forum. In the year that followed, I learned more about the product I was working on and database programming than I had in the previous five years working for the TLA agency. Not only were the questions far more twisted than I could have invented myself, the experiences were far more varied than I could have imagined.

Throughout this time, I frequented BBS's, a few different newsgroups, FidoNET, and a few other communities.

I kept the CIS account after moving out of tech, primarily because I didn't want to lose track of the friends I'd made online; I also kept it after leaving that company, because it'd become my primary online interface. (I actually still have that account because every so often, some sends an email to it.)

Of course, these days, we all use the Web for such things. However, some things remain the same; specifically, there are communities that are worth investing time in. The Monastery is one and the current incarnation of that older support community is another. (I won't detail it because it's not really important.) When you are lucky enough to find people willing to freely share their experiences to teach and to help you avoid their mistakes, use that and learn from it (respectfully, of course).

The whole idea of Open Source, public domain software, and similar ideas, is that information should be free. When you find a trove of such information, savor it and contribute back. Doing so continues the success of the movement, introduces new people to its inherent fairness, and (as you point out) trains the next generation of leaders.

Today's 14 years olds are tomorrow's twentysomethings. By then, you Gen-X'ers will be running your own departments and leading your own teams. If you learn from the experiences you run into and the ones shared with you on your journey, you can avoid the mistakes that lead today's 40-year olds to throw temper tantrums.

By then, of course, I'll be pottering around some home, nursing acute carpal tunnel, sweetly reminiscing about the secrets one could learn through a 300-baud modem, and fondly recalling text adventures played on green screens with 7x9 pixel characters.

--f

Show of hands: How many monks built themselves a terminal from a kit? (I'm thinking Heath 19).

Not entirely defunct...

SIMTEL20 still exists in some form...

You are definitely not full of crap! God, you have no idea how much I would have killed to know about this place back in May '99, when I started learning Perl on my own. As I mentioned in a recent node, I'd still be wandering around in the dark creating bad code and being proud of it.

This place has been a very educational forum for me and plenty others, I'm sure. Whenever I have a question, it's already been answered. Whenever I don't understand something, there's a good chance someone else has already explained it. And of course, the community itself is, for the most part, friendly.

As for the immaturity level - that applies to all ages. I generally work with people 20+ years older than me and let me just say: Have you ever seen a 40 year old man in perfect mental health throw a temper-tantrum? It isn't pretty. Moving on...I'll go out on a limb and admit that I'm 20. I have a habit of acting my age. :( But thankfully, many monks have tolerated it, but not for much longer I'm sure. And why should they have to? Acting like a brat only brings down the quality of the site. But on the other hand, "people" experience ushers maturity. And maturity increases the quality of the site. ::Ouch:: My brain hurts. But, without knowledge a person's people skills will lack because they will no longer have something intelligent to say. So, I've once again backed myself into a state of confusion... PerlMonks appears to increase both knowledge and relational skills, thereby increasing the maturity of any visitor who wishes to participate in the community long enough to benefit from it.

I know a very prominent CEO at a very cutting-edge and successful company who, when hiring new employees, takes an incredible approach. These college graduates come into the office to be interviewed for a very technical and well-paying job. They think that college has given them what they need to succeed and that they're some kind of commodity because they got a 4.5 GPA for their entire academic career. Most of them leave the interview in tears. This CEO forces them to realize that without real-world experience, they're nothing but a framed little piece of paper to hang on the wall. That without the ability to go where they need to get the answers they need, they're not worth investing in for they'll have a hard time progressing in their chosen field. Of course, that's just the first interview, the second concentrates on relational skills. I swear, this guy likes creating suicidal programming monsters!

Sarah

You are definitely not full of crap..

As JAYPM (Just Another Young Perl Monk), I feel both honored and privileged to be a part of the PerlMonks community. With the help of PerlMonks, I am learning more and more about perl each day, and every helpful node I see, puts me at an advantage.
PerlMonks has been the foundation of my learning, since day 1; And I have never been to a more friendly and open enviroment dealing with programming.

I have been using UNIX for several months (although unrelated), and have been coding (or, fooling around with programming) since I was 11; I have experience with Logo, BASIC, JAVA, and now I'm learning Perl. And, from experience I can say that of all the references, and CS courses, nothing has been as helpful as PerlMonks.

PerlMonks covers everything for serious and newbie perl scripters..

When I started with Perl back in '93/'94 there was mostly USENET and IRC. Now, there are also many mailing lists, websites such as this, the UGs, and other ways to quickly communicate with like-minded folks. Sort of like when I was a kid, I had a Big Wheel (and Green Machine!).. and nowadays these things are motorized (showing how things have changed)!

I wish more people would get involved with various sub-communities of the Perl community. Personally, I think there is only so much one can learn from book and tutorials. At some point it is beneficial for someone to venture out (online or not) and get involved. Not only can you meet some cool (and no-so-cool) people, but you learn a heck of a lot. Even after doing Perl for so long I still say "Oh cool! I never did it that way!" when seeing what some people write. I'll read threads here (and on mailing lists) where you _really_ see that TIMTOWTDI! It's cool to be able to do that, and you can't if you don't get involved in some way.

So, all you youngins out there.. get involved! Stay involved! And get others to be involved!

Cheers,
KM

It seems I come from the same cloth as both of you. I'm 20, I've been teaching myself various programming languages since I was 8, and am just now beginning to use my knowledge for a (slight) financial gain.

Anyway, I compeltely agree with you about the benefits of a quality online community such as this. I've only been attempting Perl for about a month, and I was fortunate enough to find this place almost immediately. I can honestly say that this has been the most directly useful website I've ever used. I can gush on and on about PerlMonks, but I guess I should ramble on to my point:

While a solid online community is great, a real community is fantastic.

Even from my BASIC days, I never really found anyone that I could relate to about programming. I tried desperately to get my friends, even family, interested to no avail. In high school, I took a BASIC and C++ class ( for obvious GPA-related reasons *ahem*) and much to my dismay, noone there actually cared about the finer art of coding, they just wanted to make flashing pictures, or loop a curse word a 1000 times. They just weren't hackers, to use the cliche. I suppose I still blame my lack of getting any great projects completed partially on the fact that I never had anyone to motivate me. Writing a few cool hacks feels good, but when nobody understands or cares, you begin to feel a little dismayed. Fortunately, through discovering Perl (and Linux), I've found out that a couple of my friends were also closet geeks. Not to sound immodest, but they're not as knowledgeable about programming as me, but they're really willing to learn, and it's great to teach them what I know, and learn things in return.

So I can wrap this up by saying this: Use PerlMonks, PerlMonks is fantasgreat. But don't give up trying to find living, breathing people around that could be just as hacker-ish as you.

And that's why I'm not an English major...

I'm amazed at how much of a difference a community like this makes. I started learning Perl in Antarctica, without any internet access, only a copy of 'Programming Perl' and it was a slow process, all by myself.

Just being able to look at questions other people have asked really makes life easier. Tutorials and stuff like that are also very useful.

--
Kevin O'Rourke

Thanks to all who contribute either questions or answers!

--traveler