...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?
You do realize that we're in the midst of a discussion pondering the very question of whether Perl (by itself/as a career) is a marketable skill.
Presumably one learns new skills either as a side effect of a project, or because they've intentionally decided that their current skills are no longer sufficient. And how do they decide that? By looking at the job market, by looking at trends, and by discussing the issue with colleagues.
Given this, it's safe to assume that several members of Boston.pm (such as myself) are currently wondering if Perl no longer has a sufficient market support for it to be the "top line" skill, and whether they should start (or continue) refocusing their careers such that some other language becomes their primary area of expertise. (At least for those of us for which Perl isn't already a side-line.)
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...
Well good for you.
Most of us have a laundry list of languages on our resume, but that doesn't mean we look forward to wading through poorly written PHP code (not to imply that all PHP code is poorly written or that Perl code might not also be poorly written).
-Tom
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