Re: Why do people say 'Perl' is dead?!?!

[BrowserUk]

Why do you care "What people say"?
Does that affect how much jobs pay?

Some like to code in triplicate: String newString = (new StringBuffer(aString)).append(anInt).toString();
Whilst others prefer to masticate: char *newString = strcat( aString, sprintf( malloc( 6 ), "%6d", anInt ) ); (**)
For some, every step is very hard won: (*)
Perlers just like to get the job done: my $newString = $aString . $anInt;

Fashions, as we all know, have a tendancy to come and go.
But functionally, we wear clothes to keep warm.
A dried meat dress, will never suppress
the utility of jeans. Even if they're torn.

So decide for yourself, what's important to you.
Being part of the crowd who cry "Perl's dead!" aloud.
Or one of the thousands that, every day,
get the job done using Perl. Their way.

(*)Hard won:

<Reveal this spoiler or all in this thread>

(**)Bugs intentional!

[ashish.kvarma]

Does that affect how much jobs pay?

Nothing against perl or to offend you also cannot comment in general if it affects everyone but it does affect me.

I started my career as a perl developer and have been coding in perl for last 6 years in a offshore development company. I enjoy working with perl and find it better than many other languages which I learned in past.
Only issue comes, when I look out for opportunities available in market.
Most opportunities are where its good to have, as it helps team on deployment and automation testing. Remaining are on maintenance and level 3 support. I don't see many opportunities in pure perl development unless I decide to move out of my home country.

So here are options for me:

• Change my primary technology from perl to java/.net/.... (which is not easy in this part of world, if you are a perl developer today you are a perl developer forever.
• Move to Level 3 support. (which is not my interest area.)
• Move to some other country where opportunities are better than here. (Once again not an easy task)
• Stay with the (very) limited opportunity any be satisfied with whatever it pays even if its not at par with rest of the market.
  (Which i have been doing for a while now)

In short it does affect (at least) me. No matter how much I like perl, sometimes I feel I should have not started my career with perl development. Probably learning it as a helping utility/language would have done better for my career

[marto]

"No matter how much I like perl, sometimes I feel I should have not started my career with perl development. Probably learning it as a helping utility/language would have done better for my career"

I find this attitude strange, had you started your career as a cobol programmer would you be complaining that after almost fifty years of it's release the number of cobol job options available to you (feel free to limit this again by your geographic region) has decreased? I didn't start my career as a Perl developer, I may not end it that way. Seems to me like you're putting all of your eggs in one basket. Diversify your skill set. Learning something new doesn't mean you have to completely forget what you knew before.

Also you seem to limit your options to what others are prepared to do for you, you have the options of telecommuting or setting up your own consultancy etc.

[sundialsvc4]

Change my primary technology from perl to java/.net/.... (which is not easy in this part of world, if you are a perl developer today you are a perl developer forever.

“You are not the only movie-star who feared becoming “type-cast.”   Self-marketing is always part of this constantly-changing business, and by the way, “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.”   Don’t worry too much about people in other countries taking your jobs away (especially given that you are ... uhhh....), and don’t worry too much about having to move to another country to find work (unless, of course, you want to move to America where, if you are a highly experienced programmer, you can very easily not-find work).   ;-)

Seriously:   Master the tools that you currently know, and never, ever stop learning.   You are part of a profession where the opportunities for self-learning never end, no matter where in the world you are.   I would also suggest that you start working very hard now to groom contacts and professional relationships that do not involve working for the companies who are currently outsourcing work from the USA, even though it might be somewhat difficult to find those companies “where you are planted” and even if it involves a pay cut.   Purely as a self-defensive move, because that gravy train is going to dry up completely someday soon, and the lushest green grass quickly turns back into the desert from whence it came.

[ashish.kvarma]

Thanks marto and sundialsvc4 for responding.

I am not at all worried that somebody is some part of world would take opportunity out of my hand. In fact it may be true otherwise considering I am working in/for .... (totally agree to sundialsvc4) ;).
I do feel that there are less opportunities (in comparison to Java/.Net) but when you compare it with number of people in queue its probably balanced out. Only concern remains is $ paid by job. Many/most companies (in this region) take advantage of the situation and .... (hence my frustration)

I have the option to start up on my own but (in the burst of emotions) missed that in my post. It takes some time but seems to be the (probably the only) solution

[ricDeez]

This is one of the best posts, I have ever seen here! and I have seen some really good ones!!!

Pity I can only upvote it once...

[sundialsvc4]

I only regret that I can only up-vote a posting once.   This one (especially with the spoiler revealed   :-O !! .. what language-monstrosity is that?!?!) is well worth printing and hanging on the office wall.

[BrowserUk]

what language-monstrosity is that?!?!

Haskell.

And if you follow the thread forward a couple of posts, you encounter a seemingly innocent question: "and what if you want to concatenate three pieces?"

The most telling story is that in the year since it was asked, no one has attempted to answer that; never mind the follow-ons: four pieces; five pieces; ...

[sundialsvc4]

Gack.

There are definitely what I call “proof-of-concept” (POC, a.k.a. PITA) languages, which are designed by academics for academics (or for military contracts).   They trust the computer so much, and the programmer so little, that an actual programmer can’t actually do a damn thing with it.   :-)   And then there are the handful “war-horse” languages such as Perl (and, in its own world, COBOL) that can be relied upon to ride into battle with you and to bring you out both victorious and alive.

As I have related before, I have also watched a very famous company that should have known better dive into a Ruby project to replace a Perl project ... only to discover, not only that they were “merely re-implementing something that already worked,” but that the replacement didn’t work because the actual implemented state of the Ruby libraries they were relying on were not as thoroughly implemented as those they were conditioned to rely-upon in Perl.   The entire project turned into a death march.   A pragmatic language implementation, I think, lives-or-dies more based on its available library base than by the properties of the language itself.

[Jenda]

The best thing is that the whole idea of a "safe string" with a single "quoting" is ... erm ... nonsense.

I mean what makes string "safe" to insert into "INSERT INTO Foo VALUES ('$here') is totally different than what makes it safe to insert into <input ... value="$here"/> or <span onclick="alert('$here')">..., or "open my $IN, $here or die;</c> etc. etc. etc.

It makes sense to mark something "unsafe" (aka. tainted = coming from an non-trusted source), but what makes it safe differs.

OTOH, try to implement something similar (without the use of the builtin tainting!) in Perl. It's also gonna take a bit of code to overload all string operators to work for the String::Safe and String::Unsafe.