Happy Monkday!!1! You've been here 20 laborious years. You look marvelous!
I sing with a group of top-notch musicians (our website) that I joined back in '98, because I wanted to challenge myself to become a better singer and performer. I did the same thing when I joined this website -- to learn and get better about everything to do with Perl.
Since my background in development languages was C and assembler, my early Perl code looked suspiciously like C. That was just my 'accent' talking. I've become a much more fluent reader and writer of Perl since then. And I owe that improvement to this community, to The Perl Foundation for supporting annual conferences, and to the regular Perlmonger meetings I attend (and host in Toronto).
I continue to be heartened about the progress that Perl development makes -- there are still regular releases, and Ovid is making progress with his OO project Corinna. And there are new modules and updates popping up on MetaCPAN every week. So much for the Greek chorus chanting 'Perl is dead' every year.
The quote I had planned to close with turns out to be made up (about Pablo Casal's contining to practise at age 80, because he felt he was '.. making progress.' here), but still, I like the idea of continuing to practise, even after 20+ years of using a technology, or being a musician. If I get a little better every day, every week, that's progress. I like that.