At 19.12 -0400 2000.06.15, Adam Turoff wrote:
>In many ways, Perl is viral. Here are some vectors of infection
>I've seen over the years:
>
>1) Company: We want to do X. Let's hire a consultant for advice.
>
> Result: Consultant says Perl works for X, use Perl.
>
> Advantage: Consultant moves around, spreading Perl.
>
> Disadvantage: A lot of consultants don't advocate/know/use Perl.
> No one left behind to actually use Perl.
>
>
>2) Company: We want to do X. Let's hire someone with experience.
>
> Result: Employee says Perl works for X, use Perl.
>
> Advantage: Employee stays around, promotes Perl within the
> company.
>
> Disadvantage: Employee leaves, unmaintainable code is left,
> project is scrapped, Perl is avoided.
>
> Employee was brilliant and leaves, employer
> can't find a suitable replacement, left with
> the feeling that "You can't hire Perl programmmers".
>
>
>3) Company: We want to do X. Let's find some free code to do it.
>
> Result: Some random package downloaded of unknown quality.
>
> Advantage: Could be written in Perl. Could cause Perl
> consultants/programmers to be hired.
>
> Disadvantage: Could have been wwwboard.pl
>
>
>Those are the three that come to mind most easily. I'm probably
>underselling the advantages and overselling the disadvantages.
>
>Any other experiences out there?
In my last company, I saw 1. and 2. I was the only real perl
programmer left, and I had written almost all of the code that ran
the web site. They chose to stick with VB and Java programmers
because they are cheaper and easier to find. Part of the reason I
left was that they were moving away from Perl and toward VB/ASP, and
then when I left they said, hey, who is going to run all this code?
Well, duh. I had only been there coding in Perl for four years.
That's a lot of code.
And then I consulted for them for a few months, basically helping
them for the interim period after I left. I still spread Perl
around, however. I spread an appreciation of Perl to the people
charged with maintaining my code as I showed them how it worked, and
when people asked me for various solutions to certain problems, I
showed how Perl was one of the better solutions. But without a
really strong Perl programmer there to work on this stuff, I don't
know what is going to happen.
--
Chris Nandor | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://pudge.net/
Andover.Net | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://slashcode.com/
