The central meeting place for Perl aficionados is Usenet. If you’re not familiar with Usenet, it’s a collection of special-interest groups (called newsgroups) on the Internet. For most anyone using a modern browser, Usenet access is as simple as a selecting a menu option on the browser. Perl programmers should consider subscribing to the following newsgroups:

At some point, it seems like every Perl programmer subscribes to comp.lang.perl.misc. You may eventually abandon it if the discussion becomes too detailed, too belligerent, or too bizarre for your taste. But you’ll likely find yourself coming back from time to time, either to ask a question or just to check out the latest buzz.

One bit of advice, however: before posting questions to comp.lang.perl.misc (or any newsgroup, for that matter), you should read the group for a few days and read the FAQ (see Section 1.4.2). The comp.lang.perl.* newsgroups are a wonderful resource if you have an interesting or unusual question, but no one can save you if you ask something that’s covered in the FAQ.

By the way, if you’re a first-time poster to comp.lang.perl.misc, you shouldn’t be surprised if you receive an email message listing various resources on Perl that you may not know about. This is done via an “auto-faq” service, which scans all postings and sends this helpful email to anyone who hasn’t posted earlier.