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"I think that the average age of a Perl developer is about 35 years (I have no official data for this, my hunch is based on the people I saw at numerous YAPCs I
by V-2 12y ago
"I think that the average age of a Perl developer is about 35 years (I have no official data for this, my hunch is based on the people I saw at numerous YAPCs I had the opportunity to be present at).
Assuming this is true and assuming a dev enters into production at 23 years old, it results that the average Perl developer has 12 years of software development experience.
What kind of code would you prefer in your business critical, money making software products? one written by people with an average of 12 years experience in the language of choice"
Whoah, hang on there. Even if they did have an average of 12 years of experience, it hardly means that it's been Perl all this time.
Obviously the reasoning that led to this bit isn't rock solid, either ;)
"[...] or one written in a language that appeared on the radar in the last decade:
Ruby on Rails, the framework that made Ruby popular was launched in late 2005"
2005, that's 9 years of experience at best. How lame in compare to 12 :)
(Don't trust Android devs, Android didn't come out until autumn 2008)
- jqm 12y agoI thought the first ending you had was gold... (Very rough Paraphrase).. It sucks in this business when our knowledge base starts becoming obsolete, and we are sometimes tempted to think of reasons we don't have to learn new things, and also why no one else should either.....
- V-2 12y agoThanks - I deleted it because I googled up the guy and realized he was actually a very reputed developer. So I removed this out of professional respect
- tudorconstantin 12y agoYes, my statements might be superficial, but since when is Android a programming language? How many developers with 9 years experience with RoR or Ruby can you think of, besides David Heinemeier Hansson and Yukihiro Matsumoto?
- djur 12y agoI know several, including myself. But total experience is more relevant than experience with a particular language or technology, unless you're using the standards of the corporate HR department. Android isn't a language but it's the kind of heavily specialized environment that developers will put on their resume and companies will hire for.
- V-2 12y agoOkay, Android is not a programming language, but you also didn't limit yourself to programming languages as such - Rails is just, to quote your words, "the framework that made Ruby popular" (whereas Ruby itself is nearly 20 years old). Indeed, there is no reason to assume that RoR developers who have been in the business for >=9 years were Ruby devs since the day Rails was released, but I can't see how it is any different in case of Perl. I just accepted your logic (which I believe to be flawed) for the sake of argument. Don't get me wrong, I found your article interesting and I like when people go against the tide of hype, speaking for (currently) underappreciated technologies. I just think you used some exaggerated rhetorics.
- allendoerfer 12y agoI would be rather concerned when a person has indeed been programming for 12 years and the only language he or she used was Perl.