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I disagree. First, it's hard to find good developers, period. S econd, in general, good developers are hard to find by design (e.g., to avoid recruiters, but

I disagree. First, it's hard to find good developers, period. S econd, in general, good developers are hard to find by design (e.g., to avoid recruiters, but also because they are most tof the time already doing interesting work). Lastly, yes, it's hard to find good Perl programmers to do boring work, under boring conditions, at a boring wage. But then that's true of all good developers. Try to find a Rails programmer to remediate crappy code (I've tried).

laumars 13y ago
You're missing my point, PHP developers that know how to build websites are available ten to the dozen. But Perl most of the Perl developers we've tried to recruit over the last 18 months are either completely clueless at writing RESTful APIs or just terrible developers (sometimes even both). We've had far more success at hiring good PHP developers and teaching them Perl then we have had at finding the Perl developers that can write web technologies. But this might just be a facet of our location (a suburb that's more than an hour away from any city), so all the developers of "niche" languages (such as Perl has sadly become) tend to get drawn to the city and higher wages. Where as those who are still good developers but not as money driven tend to pick the more popular languages because they'll pick the work in the area they want to work. (that's probably an unfair generalization statement, but it's true for the local area where I live).
- rjbond3rd 13y ago
  Very cool! Build vs. buy, you're building, everyone wins (plus you're a great employer for training your devs). What's your product or service? Now Perl programmers are now seeking -you- out :) And I'm sure you already know about the YAPC job fair: http://www.yapcna.org/yn2013/job-fair.html http://www.yapcna.org/yn2013/job-fair.html
  - laumars 13y ago
    Thanks for the YAPC link. We're UK based though, so quite a way away from Texas. :( We do online games (amongst other things). Though I don't want to go into too many details as I try to keep a degree of anonymity online.
sabat 13y ago
Try to find a Rails programmer to remediate crappy code (I've tried). It's easy to find good Rails programmers, as long as you aren't fixated on them doing facetime.

laumars 13y ago

You're missing my point, PHP developers that know how to build websites are available ten to the dozen. But Perl most of the Perl developers we've tried to recruit over the last 18 months are either completely clueless at writing RESTful APIs or just terrible developers (sometimes even both). We've had far more success at hiring good PHP developers and teaching them Perl then we have had at finding the Perl developers that can write web technologies. But this might just be a facet of our location (a suburb that's more than an hour away from any city), so all the developers of "niche" languages (such as Perl has sadly become) tend to get drawn to the city and higher wages. Where as those who are still good developers but not as money driven tend to pick the more popular languages because they'll pick the work in the area they want to work. (that's probably an unfair generalization statement, but it's true for the local area where I live).

rjbond3rd 13y ago
Very cool! Build vs. buy, you're building, everyone wins (plus you're a great employer for training your devs). What's your product or service? Now Perl programmers are now seeking -you- out :) And I'm sure you already know about the YAPC job fair: http://www.yapcna.org/yn2013/job-fair.html http://www.yapcna.org/yn2013/job-fair.html
- laumars 13y ago
  Thanks for the YAPC link. We're UK based though, so quite a way away from Texas. :( We do online games (amongst other things). Though I don't want to go into too many details as I try to keep a degree of anonymity online.

sabat 13y ago

Try to find a Rails programmer to remediate crappy code (I've tried). It's easy to find good Rails programmers, as long as you aren't fixated on them doing facetime.