I don't think it made a huge difference in most of these guys careers. I'm sure Perl "specialists" were able to move stacks if they wanted to...and you learn mo

I don't think it made a huge difference in most of these guys careers. I'm sure Perl "specialists" were able to move stacks if they wanted to...and you learn most of it on the job anyway so its not like you had to take a year off to catch up learning Java. So yeah it was a time investment for people but I don't think its as dramatic as you're making it seem. I'm saying this based on the fact the job market was amazing for software developers in the last decade or more. Things now might be different.