the way i think of my language skills in my own head is mostly a three-level system: read, write, and debug. at the first level, you know enough to be able to

the way i think of my language skills in my own head is mostly a three-level system: read, write, and debug. at the first level, you know enough to be able to look at existing code and have some idea what's going on. (this is me with C++.) at the second level, you know enough to write new code with real functionality and have some chance of its working. (this is me with C.) at the third level, you have a fairly thorough understanding of most parts of the language and know idioms, common pitfalls, etc., and can fix other people's code. (this is me with q, and it was me with java seven years ago when i was working in java.) if you want to extend this, an extra level up could be "hack", where you contribute to the language itself--modify gcc or the python interpreter or whatever. (i aspire to get to this level in q, and i think i'm close.) not sure how to wedge a fifth level into the system....