6 ms·

The article makes a good point. But, the title (and comments here) infer that there are a mountain of reasons why people don't use it. Is there a compelling a

by tlianza 14y ago

The article makes a good point. But, the title (and comments here) infer that there are a mountain of reasons why people don't use it. Is there a compelling argument against that mountain, or is this just a reminder that Ruby/Python/Closure/Scala communities would be well-served to try and improve in this area?

fennecfoxen 14y ago
The worst problem with Perl as a language is hiring for a good Perl programmer. It's easy to hire a mediocre Perl programmer, mind you, sometimes even a mediocre programmer who's really good at Perl specifically and knows all the packaging tricks and whatnot so he can get through the interview before falling apart on the job, but really hard to find the good ones. It just doesn't have much mindshare at the moment (ugh, I used the word "mindshare", but it's true). My last job was programming a snazzy Perl system. My current job is at a startup that my last boss helped found. He chose Ruby because he was tired of trying to hire for Perl programmers. After being involved with the hiring process over there as well, I'm inclined to sympathize. Honestly, we ended up just mostly advertising for programmers with experience in Ruby/Python/etc who would be willing to do Perl. That's the only insurmountable-mountain I know of. (Postscript. If you're the rare actual-really-good Perl programmer looking for a job, I am aware of two places willing to hire you, one in Sunnyvale and one in NYC. PPS. Sorry, probably no telecommute. But I don't work there these days so I'm not sure.)
- chromatic 14y ago
  If you're the rare actual-really-good Perl programmer looking for a job, I am aware of two places willing to hire you, one in Sunnyvale and one in NYC. Most of the great Perl programmers I know either have full-time jobs or have little desire to relocate. (I'd entertain interesting short-term telecommute gigs now and then myself.)
- latj 14y ago
  It sounds like "being a perl programmer" was one of the main characteristics you and your boss were looking for in the beginning... this is a red flag for me- if I am learning more about a job and they seem too concerned to get a "perl programmer", "java programmer", etc, I know to steer clear- it means the people designing the software and managing the projects think its hard to learn a new programming language which means they themselves probably arent good. At moment, there are plenty of programming jobs, and there seems to be a demand for perl programmers- probably because it has fallen out of favor with fresh grads and also a lot of the perl openings are for working on existing code base instead of a new shiny project. I dont blame the kids- they should go work at start ups. But they shouldnt for a moment buy into the anti-perl sentiment that pops up at software meetings and conferences (perl 6 jokes are just easy one-liners for people with no imagination).
  - fennecfoxen 14y ago
    The problem revolves around being able communicate what's going on. If you try to be helpful and informative and say something like "Object-oriented software engineer (Perl)" as your job post title, you immediately (a) get every schmuck who once did testing with Perl who is now searching for 'perl' to apply, even if they don't know any OO, thus jamming the interview process, (b) immediately get most anyone else to say "ewwwwww, Perl, I'd never be interested / I have no experience". You have to end up saying "Object-oriented software engineer in a dynamic programming language", request people in with experience in (e.g.) languages such as Ruby, Python or Perl, and only mention that it's actually in Perl further down the post once you've got their attention with the rest of it. This is a trifle more manipulative and less straightforward than a decent straightforward honest software engineer would instinctually prefer. Anyway. It's true, a couple of of the best candidates actually hired there came from Python backgrounds. By contrast, I assume you can say something like "Object-oriented software engineer (Python)" or "Object-oriented software engineer (Ruby)" (or Frontend Engineer / Backend Engineer / etc) and not have this particular set of problems. I don't know what problems you would have, but... not those. Now, to be fair, it worked marginally better when the company-recruiters weren't all jerks about letting us post a programming challenge with the posting (because it didn't fit in with a preexisting workflow)... which makes it easier to find the random Spanish major with decent programming instincts and a little Perl. But still.
- ralphgoodtimes 14y ago
  I'm interested. I love Perl, and would love to work for a company that requires me to program in Perl. Care to share which companies are these? Thanks.
  - jleader 14y ago
    If you're in Los Angeles, check out http://perl.la/ http://perl.la/. I know my employer (oversee.net) is hiring, and I'm pretty sure many of the others on there are as well.
    - wiredd 14y ago
      ZipRecruiter is also hiring perl programmers in Los Angeles (email in profile if anyone's interested).
  - ZeroMinx 14y ago
    If you want to work with Perl, http://jobs.perl.org/ http://jobs.perl.org/ is always a good place to look.
  - fennecfoxen 14y ago
    I know of ShutterStock (NYC) and Aruba Networks (Sunnyvale) (AirWave team only). AirWave was interesting, but I don't know what they're doing over there anymore since I left and there's been some management shakeups (some of which may have been positive). Shutterstock is where a former coworker went; he says it's snazzy and they just filed for IPO. I also hear Blekko is all Perl (it's the dmoz directory-people making a search engine. it's got social-search-related features, too, or something like that.) Apparently they have some fancy sophisticated technology for their backend systems (store big bitfield indexes on SSDs with a disk-backed store for the rest, spread across dozens of nodes, etc.) But I don't know anyone actually working there. If you have the initiative you can look up their job applications yourself :P
  - Goladus 14y ago
    Best Practical in Somerville, MA is looking for perl hackers: http://bestpractical.com/about/jobs.html#hacker http://bestpractical.com/about/jobs.html#hacker (I've been using their perl/mason based ticketing system, RT, for 5 years)
- waffle_ss 14y ago
  Are there really any compelling reasons to use Perl over Ruby for greenfield projects (i.e. not legacy maintenance)? I've written maybe a dozen medium-length Perl scripts (but nothing very large) before I got into Ruby, and I can't seem to think of anything that Perl does that can't be done at least as well in Ruby. Honestly not trying to start a religious war here - just curious - and I think it's fair to compare the two languages as they are both runtime interpreted and have relatively similar characteristics (and obviously Ruby took a good dose of inspiration from Perl, anyway).
  - chromatic 14y ago
    Are there really any compelling reasons to use Perl over Ruby for greenfield projects.... That's exactly what I'm doing. Reliability is only one reason I chose Perl over Ruby, but upgrading three real-world applications my business relies with their dependencies on to a new major release of Perl 5 in an afternoon while doing other things and only having to intervene three times is a tremendous boon. Upgrading from Ruby 1.9.2 to 1.9.3 wasn't that easy.
    - pyre 14y ago
      It depends on your infrastructure. Some setups just don't have an infrastructure setup to make the transition easy.
  - adrianhoward 14y ago
    For me, personally, these are some of the reasons: * I've had more years of Perl than I have of Ruby. While there's not a massive difference it comes a bit easier to my fingers and brain. * The testing framework is better - it's much easier to integrate different styles of testing and integrate tests running in other languages * I can usually get more people to do my work for me with CPAN than I can with rubygems * Moose has some interestingly different ways of breaking up abstractions (Moose is the de facto way of doing OO in Perl now. Moose is to Perl as CLOS is to Lisp) You're probably not going to be suddenly more productive if you switched to Perl - but there are some plus points. As does Ruby of course. Swings or roundabouts. Your choice :-)
  - 14y ago
- popee 14y ago
  Guess it is because perl is mostly used by sysadmins, you know shell on steroids to do the job -> scripting. Other reason can be because perl is changing in details all the time, well mostly adding useful stuff. I remember, in one moment it didn't have switch statement, after one not so big update it had :-)
- pyre 14y ago
  I also know of two places looking for Perl hackers (I'm sure there are more): http://www.grantstreet.com/ http://www.rentrak.com/ The first one is full remote, and I hear they have awesome benefits packages. I had two co-workers go there. I'm not sure if they hire outside of the US though.
- canadiancreed 14y ago
  Being usually on the other side of the equation, I found that it's pretty hard for a developer to break into the Perl world. To give a personal example, of the languages that I did when I was doing the whole schooling thing (Perl, Java, VB6), I enjoyed coding in Perl the most. Dont' know what it was, it just "clicked". But because folks that were hiring had no interest in new grads at the time (post dot-com bubble), I had to settle for PHP shops since they were the only one hiring. Even nowadays with years of experience with development (sadly still with PHP mostly), applying to Perl jobs gets the "sorry not interested" reply. Maybe I need to know Ruby or Python? :D
- zby 14y ago
  Did you announce the jobs at http://jobs.perl.org http://jobs.perl.org? I tend to use that site primarily when looking for a job. It's the only one to maintain a high signal to noise ratio, posting there also shows that the company knows about the Perl community and probably accepts its values.

by tlianza 14y ago

fennecfoxen 14y ago

The worst problem with Perl as a language is hiring for a good Perl programmer. It's easy to hire a mediocre Perl programmer, mind you, sometimes even a mediocre programmer who's really good at Perl specifically and knows all the packaging tricks and whatnot so he can get through the interview before falling apart on the job, but really hard to find the good ones. It just doesn't have much mindshare at the moment (ugh, I used the word "mindshare", but it's true). My last job was programming a snazzy Perl system. My current job is at a startup that my last boss helped found. He chose Ruby because he was tired of trying to hire for Perl programmers. After being involved with the hiring process over there as well, I'm inclined to sympathize. Honestly, we ended up just mostly advertising for programmers with experience in Ruby/Python/etc who would be willing to do Perl. That's the only insurmountable-mountain I know of. (Postscript. If you're the rare actual-really-good Perl programmer looking for a job, I am aware of two places willing to hire you, one in Sunnyvale and one in NYC. PPS. Sorry, probably no telecommute. But I don't work there these days so I'm not sure.)

chromatic 14y ago
If you're the rare actual-really-good Perl programmer looking for a job, I am aware of two places willing to hire you, one in Sunnyvale and one in NYC. Most of the great Perl programmers I know either have full-time jobs or have little desire to relocate. (I'd entertain interesting short-term telecommute gigs now and then myself.)
latj 14y ago
It sounds like "being a perl programmer" was one of the main characteristics you and your boss were looking for in the beginning... this is a red flag for me- if I am learning more about a job and they seem too concerned to get a "perl programmer", "java programmer", etc, I know to steer clear- it means the people designing the software and managing the projects think its hard to learn a new programming language which means they themselves probably arent good. At moment, there are plenty of programming jobs, and there seems to be a demand for perl programmers- probably because it has fallen out of favor with fresh grads and also a lot of the perl openings are for working on existing code base instead of a new shiny project. I dont blame the kids- they should go work at start ups. But they shouldnt for a moment buy into the anti-perl sentiment that pops up at software meetings and conferences (perl 6 jokes are just easy one-liners for people with no imagination).
- fennecfoxen 14y ago
  The problem revolves around being able communicate what's going on. If you try to be helpful and informative and say something like "Object-oriented software engineer (Perl)" as your job post title, you immediately (a) get every schmuck who once did testing with Perl who is now searching for 'perl' to apply, even if they don't know any OO, thus jamming the interview process, (b) immediately get most anyone else to say "ewwwwww, Perl, I'd never be interested / I have no experience". You have to end up saying "Object-oriented software engineer in a dynamic programming language", request people in with experience in (e.g.) languages such as Ruby, Python or Perl, and only mention that it's actually in Perl further down the post once you've got their attention with the rest of it. This is a trifle more manipulative and less straightforward than a decent straightforward honest software engineer would instinctually prefer. Anyway. It's true, a couple of of the best candidates actually hired there came from Python backgrounds. By contrast, I assume you can say something like "Object-oriented software engineer (Python)" or "Object-oriented software engineer (Ruby)" (or Frontend Engineer / Backend Engineer / etc) and not have this particular set of problems. I don't know what problems you would have, but... not those. Now, to be fair, it worked marginally better when the company-recruiters weren't all jerks about letting us post a programming challenge with the posting (because it didn't fit in with a preexisting workflow)... which makes it easier to find the random Spanish major with decent programming instincts and a little Perl. But still.
ralphgoodtimes 14y ago
I'm interested. I love Perl, and would love to work for a company that requires me to program in Perl. Care to share which companies are these? Thanks.
- jleader 14y ago
  If you're in Los Angeles, check out http://perl.la/ http://perl.la/. I know my employer (oversee.net) is hiring, and I'm pretty sure many of the others on there are as well.
  - wiredd 14y ago
    ZipRecruiter is also hiring perl programmers in Los Angeles (email in profile if anyone's interested).
- ZeroMinx 14y ago
  If you want to work with Perl, http://jobs.perl.org/ http://jobs.perl.org/ is always a good place to look.
- fennecfoxen 14y ago
  I know of ShutterStock (NYC) and Aruba Networks (Sunnyvale) (AirWave team only). AirWave was interesting, but I don't know what they're doing over there anymore since I left and there's been some management shakeups (some of which may have been positive). Shutterstock is where a former coworker went; he says it's snazzy and they just filed for IPO. I also hear Blekko is all Perl (it's the dmoz directory-people making a search engine. it's got social-search-related features, too, or something like that.) Apparently they have some fancy sophisticated technology for their backend systems (store big bitfield indexes on SSDs with a disk-backed store for the rest, spread across dozens of nodes, etc.) But I don't know anyone actually working there. If you have the initiative you can look up their job applications yourself :P
- Goladus 14y ago
  Best Practical in Somerville, MA is looking for perl hackers: http://bestpractical.com/about/jobs.html#hacker http://bestpractical.com/about/jobs.html#hacker (I've been using their perl/mason based ticketing system, RT, for 5 years)
waffle_ss 14y ago
Are there really any compelling reasons to use Perl over Ruby for greenfield projects (i.e. not legacy maintenance)? I've written maybe a dozen medium-length Perl scripts (but nothing very large) before I got into Ruby, and I can't seem to think of anything that Perl does that can't be done at least as well in Ruby. Honestly not trying to start a religious war here - just curious - and I think it's fair to compare the two languages as they are both runtime interpreted and have relatively similar characteristics (and obviously Ruby took a good dose of inspiration from Perl, anyway).
- chromatic 14y ago
  Are there really any compelling reasons to use Perl over Ruby for greenfield projects.... That's exactly what I'm doing. Reliability is only one reason I chose Perl over Ruby, but upgrading three real-world applications my business relies with their dependencies on to a new major release of Perl 5 in an afternoon while doing other things and only having to intervene three times is a tremendous boon. Upgrading from Ruby 1.9.2 to 1.9.3 wasn't that easy.
  - pyre 14y ago
    It depends on your infrastructure. Some setups just don't have an infrastructure setup to make the transition easy.
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  For me, personally, these are some of the reasons: * I've had more years of Perl than I have of Ruby. While there's not a massive difference it comes a bit easier to my fingers and brain. * The testing framework is better - it's much easier to integrate different styles of testing and integrate tests running in other languages * I can usually get more people to do my work for me with CPAN than I can with rubygems * Moose has some interestingly different ways of breaking up abstractions (Moose is the de facto way of doing OO in Perl now. Moose is to Perl as CLOS is to Lisp) You're probably not going to be suddenly more productive if you switched to Perl - but there are some plus points. As does Ruby of course. Swings or roundabouts. Your choice :-)
- 14y ago
popee 14y ago
Guess it is because perl is mostly used by sysadmins, you know shell on steroids to do the job -> scripting. Other reason can be because perl is changing in details all the time, well mostly adding useful stuff. I remember, in one moment it didn't have switch statement, after one not so big update it had :-)
pyre 14y ago
I also know of two places looking for Perl hackers (I'm sure there are more): http://www.grantstreet.com/ http://www.rentrak.com/ The first one is full remote, and I hear they have awesome benefits packages. I had two co-workers go there. I'm not sure if they hire outside of the US though.
canadiancreed 14y ago
Being usually on the other side of the equation, I found that it's pretty hard for a developer to break into the Perl world. To give a personal example, of the languages that I did when I was doing the whole schooling thing (Perl, Java, VB6), I enjoyed coding in Perl the most. Dont' know what it was, it just "clicked". But because folks that were hiring had no interest in new grads at the time (post dot-com bubble), I had to settle for PHP shops since they were the only one hiring. Even nowadays with years of experience with development (sadly still with PHP mostly), applying to Perl jobs gets the "sorry not interested" reply. Maybe I need to know Ruby or Python? :D
zby 14y ago
Did you announce the jobs at http://jobs.perl.org http://jobs.perl.org? I tend to use that site primarily when looking for a job. It's the only one to maintain a high signal to noise ratio, posting there also shows that the company knows about the Perl community and probably accepts its values.