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