About four years ago I found myself in the same mindset. I had finally come to realize how much I didn't know and that the things I'd been able to accomplish, while significant, could have been done in small fractions of the time and much more sustainably/cleanly by, say, half of the top 100 monks in the Saints in Our Book list. I humbled myself before Perl and started paying more attention to things that had previously struck me as mere opinion.

I did have some trouble in a couple of interviews in that period because I was unwilling to call myself a Perl expert, guru, whatever. I had come to know how much I didn't know. I didn't realize that what I'd lost was the best baggage I'd ever shed.

I went from gig to gig in this time ending up being the go to hacker in all but one. Doing tutorials and running the occasional code review. Being the document writer, the tester, and completing more features/code than the other hackers. Wondering at first how this was possible since I didn't know WTF I was doing.

You're in a great place even though it doesn't feel like it. The desire and interest to learn is ultimately more important than confidence. Our curiosity is what makes us special animals, not our posture. :) The reason I suspect I was able to get a few of those jobs, despite what may have seemed like low confidence, was exuberance. Loving what you do and wanting to have fun with it is contagious. Have fun! The rest will likely follow.

I regret that I have but one vote to give to this reply and particularly to this: The desire and interest to learn is ultimately more important than confidence.

I learned a lot by spending a couple of years trying (and sometimes failing) to answer questions here at the Monastery. Aside from that, almost all I've learned about Perl has come from using it for my own projects and those of my employers. I've learned a little by just reading things I found interesting, but everything else has been from having some immediate application for the knowledge I sought.

I found that helping others helped very much in increasing my perl knowledge, as did writing code that actually solved problems for me.

I'll keep on learning new things about Perl, algorithms, data structures and idioms, and it'll be a long time until I'll feel confident with most corners of Perl 6.

Note: the same answer applies to Python, Java, Shell, PHP, JavaScript, Latex, ....

I am a reasonably good Journeyman in a variety of languages and operating systems. One of the consequences of playing the IT game for the better part of forty years is that you get a lot of experience and perspective. Things that I learned when I was a Junior FORTRAN programmer still have an application to the Java code I wrote last year.

There is a quote niggling in the back of my mind -- "Do no compare yourself to others. There will always be those who surpass your achievements, just as there will be those whom you surpass." (One of the 'Desiderata' variants? I'm not sure.) Take it to mind, don't give up trying, don't give up learning.

Philosophers have a term for a person who stops learning. That word is 'dead'. (With apologies to J.B.S. Haldane)

...Philosophers have a term for a person who stops learning. That word is 'dead'.

Hmm, I always thought there was another term for the same thing - stupid ... or is that the term for a person that stops learning but is in a position to do something about it.

A user level that continues to overstate my experience :-))

It's never a case of me against them. It's always just a case of me against the problems that I need to solve for whatever reason (usually because I really want to solve them).

And when I know that other people have already solved a given problem, I often prefer to get their help (use their advice, or use their module) rather than repeat all the work that they did (and all the mistakes they made before they got a solution that worked).

There are plenty of things on my plate that other people aren't going to do for me, so I'm busy enough as it is without trying to be the best expert in anything, and that's okay with me.

There is always more to learn. I figure the say I stop learning is the day I die. One way or the other - either I can't learn because my physical/mental status has deteriorated too far, or I've otherwise stagnated to the point I might as well be dead.

If exhaustion threatens to overcome enthusiasm, you may need to recharge the latter by a career change, new hobby, new scientific pursuit, outdoor recreation, etc.

Good luck!

The Monastery is like a great place to be, everybody is graceful and supportive, but one issue remains to be addressed, just to add a dimension to this ongoing interaction, learning is a two way process, I have this comfortable place to be when it comes to learning Perl, and this place is welcoming, this is one side, the other side is the inner-flame that makes you wanna do something with so much dedication and devotion but if you've been working yourself out on learning Perl and I know a lot of interesting topics are there, some of these, however, I am not comfortable walking through yet and would have to get back to them more than a couple of times or skip them until later on,it becomes daunting knowing that an accumulation can lead to congestion or blockage on the way, sometimes managing this gets the best of me that for a week or so I would not want to do any studying, focusing rather on venting my brain smoky-thinking fumes out of my ears, and then maybe this week can extend longer until someone cracks under the pressures of life, survival, work-hunting, family and they can't be as dedicated with the same vigor and hence a halt in the entire learning process follows.

Learning is religiously important, what do you say and what have you dear monks done when it got the best of you and how did you got back standing yet again when the circumstances were unwelcoming?

Update: I realized there's a link between this node and this one so I thought I would make this update...

I know what you're talking about. Learning is the most fun one can have, yet still means hard work. I would like to share my experiences, and even though I can only speak for myself, maybe some people might recognize themselves. This might be a little off-topic as to the original posting, but it does discuss the subject matter of learning and motivation.

In later years, I've come to realize that one of the most devastating things when it comes to motivation is trying to force it.

When I was younger, I often had a strong feeling of responsibility towards myself that I should do things that was developing my skills. Whether or not it was reading political literature or coding Perl; it always had some strange feeling of urgency to it. I found myself increasingly in a situation where things I enjoyed doing was being pitted against each other. Some of them were not only fun, but they were also becoming something that I "should" do: not so much because I wanted to but because they were "productive". Sometimes it even went so far as to making me feel guilty when I did something that was clearly improductive, such as taking an all-nighter playing video games or hanging out with friends.

But at some point, stuff becomes homework. And I don't like homework. I'm much like a kid in that sense; I tend to favor doing things that I do just for the fun of it.

As silly as it may sound, it meant that these feelings, that superficially was steering me towards productive activities, was working the other way around. When it came to choosing between two fun things, one of which I had deemed to be "productive" and the other "improductive", I tended to go for the latter, simply because I didn't "have" to do that.

This was not very hard for me to get rid off once I actually came to realize the thought-process. It wasn't nearly as pervasive as I might be making it out to be in this post. After all, I did want to learn those things. But even so, I can't say it wasn't a problem. Sometimes more, sometimes less so, but still a problem.

Generally speaking, I've found that a way to trick myself into doing stuff is to just do it. Just sit down to hack, and if you're anything like me you'll probably end up doing nothing else for the rest of the day. And the trick for me to wanting to sit down is to realize I don't have to do it. No one can make me code, not now, not never. I'd rather starve.

This attitude has done wonders for my productivity. I've never before in my life coded as much as I do nowadays. And I have tons of fun pretty much all the time.

As banal as it may seem, life isn't to be taken too seriously.

First, I would like to quote point 4 of the Cult of Done Manifesto:

Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.

Second, a tale from some years ago. My father and I were chatting with his best friend, Mark, after a dinner together. I don't recall how the topic arose, but Mark asked me how I thought I rated as a programmer. I thought in silence for a moment, then answered that I was unsure of my skills. On the one hand, I have clients and former coworkers who view me as a god made manifest. On the other, I look at the broader programming community and see all these true experts who lightly discuss topics that are far beyond my comprehension and it seems like each thing I learn only reveals three more that I don't even understand the fundamentals to study. Mark - himself an accomplished man in many fields - replied, "Good. This means you are becoming a master."

Finally, my current experiences. About three weeks ago, I started up a personal project to teach myself the ways of Moose and KiokuDB. Prior to that, I was familiar with the names and what each promised, but had never tried to use either. While in #kiokudb asking a novice question one night, I found one of the greats of the Perl world asking his own novice question as he set out to learn the same things as I had.

There is no true ranking because we each find our own path and learn different things at different times. Don't worry. Be happy. And JFDI even if you don't know how.

how do you see yourself in reference to the race

In pole position :-)