Very well put. Or, as demonstrated in an earlier response to this post, an "Amen" would probably be more apropriate. And I think the dog training analogy is appropriate here as well. All of us are, after all, attempting to train ourselves to be better perl programmers, simply by virtue of coming to this site. (Side note: maybe, to avoid the potential religious connotations of "Amen," which will invariably offend someone, maybe the button should read "Indeed," "Couldn't Agree More," "Darn Tootin'," or, my personal favorite, "Boy Howdy.") I know on one particular post of mine, I got -- by someone because they thought I was using a particular module incorrectly, when in fact, I wasn't. Silly, isn't it? Actually being downvoted because the person wasn't familiar with how I was using the module in question. But as with anything that involves a complex system (and the Perl community is nothing if not a complex system), there are always going to be weird exceptions and anomalies; weird things becoming strangely popular while seemingly very good things are brushed aside. You see it in movies, books, and music all the time. Quick example of what I mean. Several years ago, the movie "Dumb and Dumber" was playing at the same time that "Othello," starring Laurence Fishburn and Kenneth Branagh debuted. "Othello" didn't last a full week at the theatres in my home town, meanwhile, "Dumb and Dumber" was playing at two different theatres, on two screens each. What do you do? You shrug your shoulders, mumble something to the effect of "very strange," and go on about your daily business. With regard to the earning of experience, the simple fact is that, as mentioned previously, it simply doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. It is an indicator of roughly three things:

1. You tend to be at least a modestly decent perl programmer
2. You tend to be fairly active on this site
3. You tend not to be a jerk

I would argue that "experience" should be renamed "prestige." I think that is a more apt description of what it actually is. And besides, as the resident Eastern Philosopher (geez, I've put on my Philospher hat several times of late), somewhere along our journey to the destination, we realize that the journey *is* the destination. It is all about acquiring knowledge and experience, and ability to abstractly link the two. Only through that can we ever hope to have a modicum of wisdom.
___________________
Kurt