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Yes Perl is a great language -- stability, maturity, etc. But does anybody realize just how hard it is to find decent Perl programmers? It's not a large communi

Yes Perl is a great language -- stability, maturity, etc. But does anybody realize just how hard it is to find decent Perl programmers? It's not a large community to begin with and the pool of decent programmers is even smaller.

jerf 14y ago
Unless you're completely impatient, you can pretty much take anybody with a "scripting" language background and throw them in and it's fine. Works the other way around, too. Python, Ruby, and Perl are all nearly the same language under the hood, with Javascript and Lua somewhat more distant but still not all that different. (Also, I mean someone who knows Javascript, not merely someone who can copy and paste some snippets of jQuery.) Yeah, they may not know the exact APIs you're using, but that's usually the case anyhow. What doesn't work so well, or at least takes a lot longer, is to take somebody with only Java, C/C++, or other such languages, and throw them in.
- michaelpinto 14y ago
  My old CTO would have argued with you that Perl was not a mere scripting language* and that our shop's style of coding was indeed object oriented. The other problem we ran into was that the programmers who loved other languages were very religious about it. In fact I use to visualize that each programmer worshipped the specific animal that shown on the O'Reilly book cover: And I'm still haunted in my dreams by that camel. Of course the best programmers in my experience like to work in multiple languages -- but again there aren't that many of them... * This was a few years ago so this was a reference to PHP and Cold Fusion which tended to get mashed into HTML. Python was around then, but a very new thing -- and this was before the age of Ruby on Rails.
  - jerf 14y ago
    "that our shop's style of coding was indeed object oriented" All of the other languages I mentioned are roughly as OO as Perl. (You sometimes have to go looking for it, and Perl's probably ultimately the weakest at the core, but it's still there and mostly strong enough it doesn't matter.)
    - michaelpinto 14y ago
      Well keep in mind that the above quote was made about twelve years ago. The problem that we had was that the people who would take up languages like PHP were what we'd call "script kiddies" who would copy and paste code and call themselves coders. Keep in mind that this was right before the bubble burst so there was a ton of BS going around too. Of course since that era I've seen programming languages mature -- and I've also seen the industry mature as well. Although i still see a great deal of BS... : D
kamaal 14y ago
I find the opposite to be true. You are likely to find better Perl programmers than Java programmers. Because its easy to spot bad programmers in Perl. Most Java programmers can't write simple apps without the help of an IDE. Or refactor a small part of a large project with an Text editor. In many other languages forcing people to write programers in a particular style often leads to code written by bad and good programmer look the very same.
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  Most Java programmers can't write simple apps without the help of an IDE. Or refactor a small part of a large project with an Text editor. I'm curious why you think editor choice is the sign of a good developer? Pretty much nobody I know can code with a line editor (anybody else out there remember ed?) - that doesn't make them worse developers. Hell - I'd jump at an IDE that let me do automated refactoring in Perl. I like getting the computer to do things for me. Laziness is a Perl value :-)
  - kamaal 14y ago
    >>I'm curious why you think editor choice is the sign of a good developer? I have nothing against IDEs. But anybody who claims to know a language must at least able to work with the source code and semantics. If a person absolutely can't code at all. I mean slowly is still acceptable. But if he absolutely just can't write code without an IDE, I would doubt his claims of knowing the language. Knowledge of tools != Knowledge of a programming language.
    - adrianhoward 14y ago
      But if he absolutely just can't write code without an IDE, I would doubt his claims of knowing the language. Would you be productive in QED http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QED_(text_editor) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QED_(text_editor) ? Should I doubt your coding skills because of that? Knowledge of tools != Knowledge of a programming language. Agreed. But you seem to be saying that people who code well with an IDE, and can't code well with a more vanilla text editor, means that they don't know the language. This is a tool knowledge issue - not a language knowledge issue. Some people are good at coding, and others are bad at coding. IDE/editor choice has little to do with it. Lines like "Most Java programmers can't write simple apps without the help of an IDE" are just false - and have nothing to do with whether the developer is any good or not. Twenty years ago people were saying the same thing about lazy developers who use screen based editors instead of line based ones. I'm sure that twenty years before that folk were complaining about folk who use terminals instead of punched cards as god intended :-)
Mithaldu 14y ago
Finding good Perl devs is easy. Use perl reddit, blogs.perl.org, jobs.perl.org and ask people for their CPAN account. The hard part i found is finding perl developers that are willing to work for the salary of an intern, or for companies that think CVS is the bee's knees.

jerf 14y ago

Unless you're completely impatient, you can pretty much take anybody with a "scripting" language background and throw them in and it's fine. Works the other way around, too. Python, Ruby, and Perl are all nearly the same language under the hood, with Javascript and Lua somewhat more distant but still not all that different. (Also, I mean someone who knows Javascript, not merely someone who can copy and paste some snippets of jQuery.) Yeah, they may not know the exact APIs you're using, but that's usually the case anyhow. What doesn't work so well, or at least takes a lot longer, is to take somebody with only Java, C/C++, or other such languages, and throw them in.

michaelpinto 14y ago
My old CTO would have argued with you that Perl was not a mere scripting language* and that our shop's style of coding was indeed object oriented. The other problem we ran into was that the programmers who loved other languages were very religious about it. In fact I use to visualize that each programmer worshipped the specific animal that shown on the O'Reilly book cover: And I'm still haunted in my dreams by that camel. Of course the best programmers in my experience like to work in multiple languages -- but again there aren't that many of them... * This was a few years ago so this was a reference to PHP and Cold Fusion which tended to get mashed into HTML. Python was around then, but a very new thing -- and this was before the age of Ruby on Rails.
- jerf 14y ago
  "that our shop's style of coding was indeed object oriented" All of the other languages I mentioned are roughly as OO as Perl. (You sometimes have to go looking for it, and Perl's probably ultimately the weakest at the core, but it's still there and mostly strong enough it doesn't matter.)
  - michaelpinto 14y ago
    Well keep in mind that the above quote was made about twelve years ago. The problem that we had was that the people who would take up languages like PHP were what we'd call "script kiddies" who would copy and paste code and call themselves coders. Keep in mind that this was right before the bubble burst so there was a ton of BS going around too. Of course since that era I've seen programming languages mature -- and I've also seen the industry mature as well. Although i still see a great deal of BS... : D

kamaal 14y ago

I find the opposite to be true. You are likely to find better Perl programmers than Java programmers. Because its easy to spot bad programmers in Perl. Most Java programmers can't write simple apps without the help of an IDE. Or refactor a small part of a large project with an Text editor. In many other languages forcing people to write programers in a particular style often leads to code written by bad and good programmer look the very same.

adrianhoward 14y ago
Most Java programmers can't write simple apps without the help of an IDE. Or refactor a small part of a large project with an Text editor. I'm curious why you think editor choice is the sign of a good developer? Pretty much nobody I know can code with a line editor (anybody else out there remember ed?) - that doesn't make them worse developers. Hell - I'd jump at an IDE that let me do automated refactoring in Perl. I like getting the computer to do things for me. Laziness is a Perl value :-)
- kamaal 14y ago
  >>I'm curious why you think editor choice is the sign of a good developer? I have nothing against IDEs. But anybody who claims to know a language must at least able to work with the source code and semantics. If a person absolutely can't code at all. I mean slowly is still acceptable. But if he absolutely just can't write code without an IDE, I would doubt his claims of knowing the language. Knowledge of tools != Knowledge of a programming language.
  - adrianhoward 14y ago
    But if he absolutely just can't write code without an IDE, I would doubt his claims of knowing the language. Would you be productive in QED http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QED_(text_editor) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QED_(text_editor) ? Should I doubt your coding skills because of that? Knowledge of tools != Knowledge of a programming language. Agreed. But you seem to be saying that people who code well with an IDE, and can't code well with a more vanilla text editor, means that they don't know the language. This is a tool knowledge issue - not a language knowledge issue. Some people are good at coding, and others are bad at coding. IDE/editor choice has little to do with it. Lines like "Most Java programmers can't write simple apps without the help of an IDE" are just false - and have nothing to do with whether the developer is any good or not. Twenty years ago people were saying the same thing about lazy developers who use screen based editors instead of line based ones. I'm sure that twenty years before that folk were complaining about folk who use terminals instead of punched cards as god intended :-)

Mithaldu 14y ago

Finding good Perl devs is easy. Use perl reddit, blogs.perl.org, jobs.perl.org and ask people for their CPAN account. The hard part i found is finding perl developers that are willing to work for the salary of an intern, or for companies that think CVS is the bee's knees.