I think I'm going to disagree with that. Because I had to take the test in person I meet the guys in the local club. Their personal invite to club meeting and lent gear got me on the air quickly. If I just took the test online I would probably have just put my license up on the wall and moved onto something else.
Absolutely. Its a blast and a great way to meet other technical minded folk or aren't necessarily the same you'd run into just doing programming type stuff.
I grew up in a similar situation and thus gained the same sort of skills. However the area I grew up in is pretty depressed (Cumberland, MD for thoses who care https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-14/in-trump-...). What I'm seeing is that now we are at a point where so many people do things themselves that the service industry is also struggling. Contractors are no longer doing good business in the area as there has been a race to the bottom. If people don't fix it themselves most turn to a low cost do-it-all 'handy man'. Because everyone is trying to save a buck money doesn't really move around much and we're in a downward spiral.
This have gotten much better and perl 5 has great momentum these days. There was sort of a changing of the guard as a lot of the old guys moved on to perl6 or other things. However nowadays there is lots of fresh blood moving the project alone real nice like.
https://imgur.com/a/9TgW7qy