use Perl

• Long standing problem (Score:2)

  by ziggy (25)

  An OSCon or two ago, I was talking to a manager at a prominent open source company. He was very aware of the power of Perl and the capabilities of Perl hackers. I asked him under what circumstances he'd hire Perl developers, and if there were any stumbling blocks, what they were.
  
  For one-off kinds of projects, he said he'd be hesitant to hire Perl programmers to build something. Part of it is the hiring risk that your brother speaks about, but his perspective was from a risk mitigation perspective. After
  • Re:Long standing problem (Score:1)

    by Abigail (26)

    It's not just managers. Far from that. There are many knowledgable people who won't touch Perl with a 10 foot pole. Very good programmers. And they are right, Perl isn't their thing.

    It's not just perception. The problems people see with Perl are real. Perl is a handy tool. Multipurpose. But it's also difficult to handle, it's dangerous, and it has a lot of quircks. It's not for everyone. In fact, it's not the right language of many people currently using Perl. If I look at Perlmonks or Usenet, I'd say th
    • Re:Long standing problem (Score:2)

      by Ovid (2709) on 2006.01.25 20:27 (#45864) Homepage Journal

      I'm certainly happy to hear well-known Perl programmers say this. This Pollyanna "Perl for everything" attitude is just as silly as the "Java-only" folks.

      Reply to This

      Parent

      • Re:Long standing problem (Score:1)

        by Abigail (26)

        Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm certainly in the "Perl for everything" camp. However, I'm not in the "Perl for everyone" camp. I use Perl for everything I can get away with.

        However, I don't think that because I think Perl is the language of choice to solve a problem, anyone else should pick Perl to solve the same problem.