Unlike for example Java or .NET, which have some big industrial players promoting them, Perl is mostly community-driven. This community is quite active, and also includes a number of very bright people, who at the same time are also very helpful and willing to share. One manifestation of this fortunate situation is the previously mentioned CPAN public code library, another one is the Perl Monks community web site. The Perl Monks are a great example of a community site that works. Everyone can ask questions, and usually within an hour receives high quality answers: Newbies are (unless they seem too lazy or rude) given patient explanations, the more tricky questions have good chances to be answered by true experts of the field. There is also an integrated chat room for even faster feedback. But the Monastery is not just a Q&A site (although it serves that function extremely well and is not even plastered with ads like many other sites), there are also sections for discussions about Perl, for poetry, for news, for publishing code snippets, book and module reviews, even for obfuscated code (a special tradition that makes fun of the fact that Perl does not force the programmer to code in a readily readable way). And then of course, there is the whole Monastery theme which adds a nice touch.