Although it's not a bad idea, I'm not sure it would work better. Personally I feel motivated most by problems that suggest themselves in the course of my work (which need not be programming, but problem solving in general).

Also, many questions are asked in the Monastery, so trying to find an answer would rate as a good exercise IMHO. Since most get answered, you can even check your answer.

Just my 2 cents, -gjb-

I agree. I like the idea, but am also pretty sure that the advanced monks will come up with a solution fast, and by doing so, discourage the less advanced monks.

Some questions in the Seekers of Perl Wisdom section can be qualified as excersices. I tend to learn quite a lot from the replies.

Then there is the beauty of Open Source Software! Just download a certain script and take it apart. Or just join a project over at Sourceforge. I've seen some great projects there and a lot of them are looking for help.

And! There is this Golf: New spellings for old names excercise :)


--
B10m ... just my 2 euro cents

MJD ran a "Perl Quiz of the Week" a few months ago but it petered out, probably due to lack of spare time on his part as much as anything else. It's a pity, because the questions he came up with were very interesting, and he took the time to develop "beginner" and "expert" variations on the question.

It would be good to see this project revived. Surely there's someone out there with enough tuits to take it over? No doubt mjd has a backlog of questions to get the ball rolling again. The web site can be found at perl.plover.com/qotw.

Note that one of the reasons the discussion was so interesting was because he didn't specify such-and-such a module, just "here is the problem, solve it". Sometimes the answers involved modules, sometimes not, but in all cases the results were very interesting.

I think you should look at The Perl Apprenticeship Site, using the words of Dave Rolsky (known here as autarch):

Way back at OSCON 2001, Adam Turoff (a.k.a. Ziggy) suggested that Perl needed a way to hook up people with lots of skill and experience, but little time, with people who had a desire to learn and free time, but not as much experience. In other words, we needed a Perl apprenticeship site.

Meanwhile, Ken Williams and I had just started working on the Mason book and we knew we wanted to have an example site as one of our chapters. We also knew we didn't want something like a web store. Boring! And useless too, since neither of us needed a web store. So when Ziggy announced his idea, Ken suggested that we implement it for the book. It helps us because it gives us something to fill Chapter 8, and it helps the Perl community too. Perfect!

So that's our story. Now it's your turn. If you're someone who has a neat project idea and not enough time to finish, but you think you could guide a few "apprentices", then log in over in the left menu or create a new account.

If you don't have an idea but you have some free time and a desire to learn, then browse the project listings and see if there's something that interests you.

The Perl XP Training Wiki has exercises that beginners and intermediate coders could do.

The exercises idea is not a bad one. I have been translating some of Perl documentation to Lithuanian and one of the requests from the readers was to provide some exercises.

However this applies more to the beginners exercises. I find that solving problems and helping other monks helps me a lot in learning. I do understand that most of the questions in the monastery are too difficult for beginners and we might need a special node or section for beginners exercises (but then again... Categorized Questions and Answers is almost liek an exercise book (with answers!)

Update: Also, the Llama book, Learning Perl , is excellent and has exercises at the end of each chapter.

This tutorial is...

A basic Perl course primarily for use on Win32 platforms. It assumes that the reader knows nothing of programming whatsoever, but needs a solid grounding for further work. After you finish this course you'll be ready to specialise in CGI, sysadmin or whatever you want to do with Perl.