I only have this issue with one language: C -- which I rarely use, don't much like using, don't much like, but still want to remain somewhat familiar with. I've remained familiar with it by habiting Freenode ##C , which conveniently has some regulars who I like talking to about non-C subjects in between C questions. On a C question, I answer or otherwise help the questioner (... ask a better question) until someone more knowledgeable notices.

For Perl, Freenode #Perl seems like it would offer similar opportunities. You can also answer questions here, of course :-)

If one is not using a language, either on the job or for personal things, then I'm not sure why one would need to stay motivated at all. I also don't think you loose what you learned about the language - you may become rusty and not up-to-date on the latest stuff, but I suspect you could easily pickup some code and still understand it.

I think that if you like a language and it interests you, you'll have whatever motivation is needed to keep your fingers in it, whether by writing personal stuff or hanging out in places like PerlMonks. And, if you don't really like or enjoy the language, what's the reason for wanting to stay motivated about it?

Scott

This is a difficult question. For one thing, what purpose would it serve to motivate yourself to use a language you don't need for work? If you don't already find yourself motivated to play with it, then it's just not fun for you right now.

One suggestion for getting interested might be to try to find some program that the world seems to be missing, that you feel you could write in Perl. The idea is to have fun - so plowing through a book probably won't do it. It seems more fun to just go ahead and try stuff, and use the books for guidance when you get stuck. But everyone has a different style of doing things...

I'm also someone not hired to do Perl. But I love the language.

In times of no Perl at work, I have kept up my interest by getting involved with open source projects outside of work. I have 10 modules on CPAN, and I am one of the main developers of OpenGuides. Ymmv - your employment contract and/or your countries laws may get in the way.

I also hang out on IRC (ivorw) on #perl and #london.pm, and attend meetings of London Perl Mongers. I can recommend Perl monger social meetings as a good place to bounce ideas, listen to ideas, and get remotivated about Perl.

Why do people waste time doing crossword puzzles? If you have a brain, you want to exercise it. Perl..exercise for the brain muscle... :-)

So what do people do? Do you simply pick something like DBI or ojects and see what you can do? Do you simply pick up a book and dive through it? Do you take examples from here and try them out?

I'd say you need to find a project. That could be something just for you -- e.g. I've written my own photo-album cgi and my own RSS aggregator script.

Or it could be a community project. This is good if you know that you're the kind of person that needs a community of programmers to help keep you motivated. Pick some Perl-related project and devote a few hours a week to it. If you want to be bleeding edge, hack on Pugs. Or maybe organize a Phalanx project. Or focus on a community project like PPI.

Or find a product that's cool and runs/runs-on Perl and hack it. For example, the Squeezebox server is written in Perl and you can use Perl to customize it, write plugins, and so on for a very cool piece of hardware.

The point is that Perl is just a tool -- so if you want play with that really cool, well-balanced, TIMTOWTDI hammer, just start looking for some nails in your life that look interesting!

As a backup plan -- visit here often. Reading and solving other people's problems is a great way of staying connected to the language if you can't manage anything else.

At work I cannot use Perl for most of the tasks that I do. I am limited to VBScript.

I am kept motivated by helping other people further thier education into perl. If not through this site, then poeple asking random questions. Even if I don't know the answer, I know where to look and can often have a snippet of code or answer wipped up with in just a few minutes.

I like to wrestle with ideas in the area of computer science, -- data structures, algorithms, different programming paradigms. I like a programming environment that supports me in this respect.

Most of my daily work these days is centered on architecture & technical design plus program development in .NET C#. That's fine for team development of enterprise applications, but it has too much OO telescope vision and syntax overload for fast and flexible data munging and prototyping. For the latter tasks i always try to squeeze in Perl at work.

To stay on tracks with Perl (even though it's pt at most 10% of my work), I enjoy following the discussions here on PM and digesting books like Effective Perl Programming and HOP. For example I recently faced a problem at work, traversing a directory hierachy, extracting and manipulating certain files. I utilized a technique described in HOP to easily and elegantly solve this task. I could have done it in C#, but it would have taken double up the time and space.

#!C:/Perl/bin/perl.exe -w
# Program.. :  Iterate.pl: iterate over dir.tree and prefix files with dir-name.
# Function. :  Recurse from current dir; Prefix each "WrappedXml.{0,9}\.xml" 
#			  file with immediate subdir and copy this file to current/. dir.
# Usage.... :  Call Iterate.pl in the root of the dir tree to scan.
# Ref...... :  HOP Ch.4: Iterators 
# History.. :  040306 - Allan Dystrup, Ver.0, AND/KMD EDPI
# ===========================================================

use strict;
use warnings;
use File::Copy;

### -------------------------- Util -----------------------
sub Iterator (&) 	{ return $_[0] }
sub NEXTVAL 		{ $_[0]->() }

### -------------------------- Iterator -------------------
sub interesting_files {
	my $is_interesting = shift;
  	my @queue = @_;
  	return Iterator {
   	while (@queue) {
     		my $file = shift @queue;
     		if (-d $file) { 
     			opendir my $dh, $file or next;
     			my @newfiles = grep {$_ ne "." && $_ ne ".."} readdir $dh;
     			push @queue, map "$file/$_", @newfiles;
     		}
     		return $file if $is_interesting->($file);
   	} 
   	return;
  	};
}

### -------------------------- FileMask -------------------
sub is_WrappedXml {
	my $file = shift;
	return 1 if $file =~ /WrappedXml.{0,9}\.xml/i;
	return;
}

### -------------------------- MAIN -----------------------
my $WrappedXml_file = interesting_files(\&is_WrappedXml, '.');
print "Copying xml instances :\n";
while (defined(my $file = NEXTVAL($WrappedXml_file))) {
	my $newfile = $file;
	$newfile =~ s#/(WrappedXml.{0,9}.xml)#\-$1#i;	# subst / -> -
	$newfile =~ s#.*/(.*)#$1#;		        # zap base dir
	print "\t$file\n\tCopy  ->   .\\$newfile\n";	
	copy("$file", ".\\$newfile") or die "Error copy: $!";
}

Best regards
Allan Dystrup

Personally, I am looking for full time Perl work.

I had some health issues taking up my interest, but they are fixed and I'm starting to look again seriously about now.

Mostly a love of the language; it works so well, despite the insanity. It is both funny and fun. (Does that word game work in English?)

Personally, I try and stick to a number of random projects; usually all within the belly of Perl in one way or another. For instance, currently, I'm setting up a new server at my house. Intended mostly to most my personal website, which I am currently paying through my nose to have hosted externally. The current site, which is primarily CGI, I am porting over to Apache 2.2 with mod_perl 2.0.2. There is absolutely no reason for this (I guess I want to stop paying someone else to do what I can do, and most likely a little more custom), though it's something to keep my occupied and thinking of new ways to use Perl.

Other than that, trying to keep involved with the Perl community is always a way to keep your mind ontop of the language. Whether it's staying close with your local Perl Users Group, paying attention to Perl Monks, helping with different CPAN modules, etc; there's always something to do, read or keep your mind on the little land of Perl.

Just like the language, there are a million ways to keep on top (or near the top, maybe near the second summit) of your Perl. And, in most cases, it's pretty fun to do so as well!

On my previous job I wasn't allowed to use Perl, but I still used it to perform a couple of random tasks now and then, and I started contributing to CPAN, which gave me some expertise.

Reading and going to conferences was another thing that helped.

Actually, I got the organization of YAPC::EU::2005 while I was working there :-)

I guess the trick is enjoying what you do... I mean, not your job, enjoying what you're doing and where you're going with Perl :-)

My advice? If you don't have one, get a PAUSE account and start uploading :-) Also, get a user at use.perl.org and start posting there :-) Try new things! :-)

have wondered how people stay motivated if Perl isn't their job?

For me that's an easy question to answer. It is the same way I stay motivated to mess about in C, Java, HTML, JavaScript, C++ and assembler. Sometimes all at once in a single day.

For instance: one of my pastimes is hacking around with microcontrollers. Mostly Z80s, Basic Stamps, PICs of various types, and the 8051 family. To that end I am messing around with writing a plugin for Eclipse to provide IDE services for SDCC just because I can. If I like my end product (if there is ever an end product) I may even make a http://www.sourceforge.net project out of it and let other folks join me in my fun.

I also have a very active imagination and for that reason can always think up a new project to work on and therefore I'm never bored. Some of my projects (a lot of my projects) are totally impractical and a complete waste of time. At least on the surface. If you can learn something while tinkering around, even better.

One of my long-term projects is to build my own brewery. That one project has spawned off dozens of sub-projects for all kinds of gadgets incorporating mechanical skills, electronics skills, woodworking skills (I suck at that) and most importantly my programming skills.

It's easy for me to stay motivated.

---

Peter L. Berghold -- Unix Professional
Peter -at- Berghold -dot- Net; AOL IM redcowdawg Yahoo IM: blue_cowdawg

Tell us, what you are doing and we will introduce Perl to whatever you do.

I pick a problem that requires an overwhelming amount of drudge work to get done and solve it with Perl. Paying bills is one - there are modules you can use on CPAN to interface with your bank. Munging pictures is another. Unfortunately, I have not had much luck with getting my Laundry.pm module to pass the test suite yet, so I still have to do laundry by hand...