On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 03:39:04AM -0500, Tom Metro wrote:
> For me, popularity matters for two reasons:
>
> 1. If you like Perl enough that you'd like it to be all or a big part of
> your day job.
>
> Which leads me to something I've been wondering about lately: How many
> Boston.pm members can say that their primary income comes from being a
> Perl programmer?
I do. Well, from being a programmer who just happens to have been doing
perl full time for the past few years.
> But now there seems to be mounting evidence (if you follow job postings)
> that it is no longer viable to market oneself as a Perl developer.
I market myself as a programmer with significant knowledge and
experience of sysadminning and security, and whose weapon of choice is
perl. Perl comes last on that list. Even so, there's still lots of perl
jobs out there - at least over here in London. Some of them pay pretty
damned well.
> are still jobs out there, but they're thinning, and a high percentage of
> the ones that are available are entry level or have amazingly low rates.
A high percentage of *all* jobs are entry level and with shitty
salaries.
> Just this week I was talking with a local company seeking a senior Perl
> developer for a 3 month project, and they were expecting to pay under
> $20 an hour.
Fine, they shouldn't be expecting to get anyone good. I suggest that if
someone takes that then they are either inexperienced or desperate, and
if desperate you have to wonder *why* they are desperate - what is it
about them that has kept them unemployed? If their skills were
unmarketable why could they not learn new skills?
> I suspect this year is probably the last time I'll be hired specifically
> to do Perl coding.
I've *never* been hired to do perl coding. I've been hired to write
software to solve problems.
> Though my hope, slight as it is, is that perhaps Perl 6 will address
> some of the technical/mechanical perceived shortcomings of the language,
I doubt it. Those perceptions are largely wrong anyway, and bumping the
version number won't convince the ignorant or bigots. I don't care
anyway, there's plenty of employers who are neither ignorant nor
bigoted.
> If nothing else, a highly successful Parrot
> implementation that can run Python or C# faster than their native
> run-times at least provides a platform for sneaking in Perl code.)
"Sneaking in" perl code is unprofessional. All code you write should be
subject to code review, and if your company's guidelines say "thou shalt
not use perl" then you will fail the review. Even if your company
doesn't do code reviews right now (and they should) that doesn't mean
that they won't in the future. And when they do start, you'll be up
shit creek for deploying stuff without appropriate authorisation and
quality control.
> I'm also interested in understanding better why the low end of the
> market is being lost to PHP.
I confess to not caring about the low end. Web stuff is not
interesting. I'm glad to not be doing it any more. It's far more fun
writing perl code that can kill people instead of just turning their web
pages a delicate shade of lavender.
> 2. Even if the job market doesn't influence your use of Perl, you might
> care about popularity if you'd rather be able to use the latest and
> greatest applications - wikis, forums, blogs, whatever - and customize
> them without having to learn PHP, Python, or Java.
Sure. But then, I refuse to be a one trick pony. While my weapon of
choice is perl, I can also wield Java or C or any of a few others with
sufficient skill to hack stuff up. I did that just a few days ago, when
I tried to use a poorly documented java program and the only way to find
the configuration variable i needed to set was to read the source.
--
David Cantrell | Benevolent Dictator Of The World
Deck of Cards: $1.29.
"101 Solitaire Variations" book: $6.59.
Cheap replacement for the one thing Windows is good at: priceless
-- Shane Lazarus
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