I've been working through a lot of these problems:
http://www.inf.bme.hu/contests/tasks/
http://dinsights.com/POTM/oldproblems.php
While they are fun, they are more a test of my math skill than my Perl ability. While I freely admit my math needs a bit of work, I'd like to spend a little less time on math and more time on Perl. Right now those problems feel like 95% math and 5% code to me.
Any time I try to code a real hard project I get in over my head very quickly, so I am looking for something that is kind of in the middle, or something that is easily broken down into bite-sized chunks. I'm at the stage where I think I could code a magic box that returns a certain value given a certain input, but my brain seizes when I have to consider a giant complicated problem. I expect that over time my ability to deal with more complicated situations will improve.
I have some free time over the fall and winter so I'd like to accelerate my learning process by actually doing something "productive" and "useful". In an ideal world I'd find a mentor on some big Perl-based open-source project to learn from, but I doubt anyone has the time to deal with a new guy like me. Most of my learning so far has been getting familiar with the tools and learning where to find answers. None of the projects I have done so far has exceeded 100 lines.
I'm very willing to research things and invest some time into this. Fortunately, I'm not under pressure to learn Perl in 21 days, in order to find a job. I don't even work in the programming or computer field. This is just a (serious) hobby for me. I'd just like to take maximal advantage of any time I invest. A site that has a full problem specification, and links to how people have solved it in the past, maybe with incremential tips, would be very interesting.
In the past I've picked up a quite a few skills just by jumping into a project with a "sink or swim" attitude. While I am not an expert in any particular one of those skills, I manage to do okay. I haven't found anything that I can just jump into for Perl, yet...
Anyways, any suggestions for Perl-related mini-projects or volunteer work would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!