> In my humble opinion the perl community needs to embrace the concept
> of self propagation. For the most part perl/oo perl/mod_perl
> developers are self taught. Junior or mid level talent (a majority
> of the talent pool) is passed over as not enough experience.
It is interesting for me to hear that developed countries are also
having difficulties finding Perl-savvy developers out of the varsities.
I do agree that not being able to find 'Perl-ready' graduates should not
be a deterrant - I myself being a brainwashed Java advocate for a while
before stumbling onto Perl.
In my local context, deciding on Perl/ PHP/ Ruby requires a great deal
of support on the business side:
1. The average turnover rate is about 3 years. That means every 3 years
you have to retrain a new guy to take over relatively established code.
Since we have to accept the fact that it's extremely difficult to hire
an experienced Perl dev, the quality and experience of the dev team
halts at about 5-6 years.
- New strategies will be have to be formed to distinguish the core
engine from the customisable. The company must recognise the business
viability in retaining the core team, while accepting that the mediocre
will move on in time. The core team itself has to develop good mentoring
and training skills to induct the new intake.
2. Selling to clients who only understand .NET and Java ('modern'
languages) will be a challenge. Governments and large enterprises
generally (and mistakeably) associate other languages to be an
investment risk.
- Nobody asks about the innards of an appliance or a product. As long as
it runs, runs well and affordably, it's good enough.
Sounds reasonable enough, but it's a lot work to get there...
