
Is Perl coming back? - joescript
Is perl coming back?
Is it still a good career path to choose for exp or new coders?<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tiobe.com&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;content&#x2F;paperinfo&#x2F;tpci&#x2F;index.html
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blowski
This kind of question comes up a lot, not just about Perl, but about Ruby,
Cobol, PHP, Java, Haskell, etc. Unfortunately, it doesn't really have an
answer for two reasons.

Firstly, the popularity of a language in no way predicts your potential future
earnings if you learn that language. PHP is probably the world's most widely
used language, yet the average salary for a PHP developer is lower. I found
learning VBA immensely useful, but it was a frustrating language to use. I
love using Ruby and Python, but PHP work is much easier to find. Ruby taught
me a lot about programming, so it was definitely worth learning.

Secondly, developers are not good or bad because of the language they use, but
because of the value they provide. You could be a shockingly bad developer,
but excellent at explaining difficult concepts in VisualBasic to the rich and
powerful - you'll probably get rich.

Essentially, you need to reframe your question, and then answer it yourself.
What are you hoping to get out of programming? Do you want to be rich? Do you
enjoy solving problems? Are you happy to work every hour of the day, or do you
want to get out at 5pm every night? Which areas of programming make you feel
most comfortable - writing CRUD apps or complex algorithms? Do you have any
types of company you would refuse to work for (say gambling or finance)? Are
you an extrovert or an introvert? Do you prefer to work in a small company or
a large corporate? These kinds of questions will narrow your choices and help
you to choose a career path.

So... you might learn Perl, which causes you to get a job you end up hating
but introduces you to somebody that recommends you learn Haskell, which gets
you the job you love for gazillions per year. In other words, how the $%&#
should we know?

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_partek
Perl has been around for a long time. Given its popularity as a language used
for simple web services and system administration there has been a lot of code
written. A lot of code written also means there's a lot of code to maintain.

When it comes to programming you should pick a language you are comfortable
with and use it often. Once you have mastered simple programming
methodologies, moving between languages will be relatively easy.

If you want to learn something that's going to get you a job quicker, go to
indeed.com or simplyhired.com and search the various languages in the job
listings in your local area or where you want to work. You'll get a better
gauge of what hiring managers are looking for.

~~~
joescript
i check dice, indeed and simplyhired and openings are pop up alot, but its
hard to tell with HR people posting the Jobs and they know nothing about the
field.

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jfe
i'll defer to alan perlis on this: "a language that doesn't affect the way you
think about programming, is not worth knowing."

does perl offer something distinctly different from other, younger languages?
IMHO, not really.

there _is_ a bunch of perl code out there that needs maintenance, which is why
i learned just enough perl to _read_ it. but who truly gets into programming
to maintain something that's already built? might as well learn COBOL if
that's how you think.

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brudgers
Perl 6, a new language inspired by Perl, is coming. ;)

IMO; Neither it or Perl 5 provide particular advantages as a general career
path at this point...aside perhaps from getting out in front of Perl 6 on the
chance it suddenly becomes the next big thing.

That's not to say Perl and Perl 6 are not worth knowing and using. I find The
approach to errors in Perl 6 to look like an attractive future. But a lot of
Perl's traditional strength in regular expressions appears in other languages.
and I'm not sold on the idea that Perl's contextual evaluation semantics
outweigh the textual complexity it introduces when reading source code.

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gus_massa
[Ignoring that the methodology can be completely flawed ...]

It's difficult to estimate the errors without finding the complete dataset and
being a statistician, but let's try anyway.

We can look at the lower curves and assume that they are wavy because of some
noise error. The curves of the VB and Python (and close languages) go up and
down between .5% and 1%, and that value is similar to the monthly change.

So my guess is that the noise for the languages in the lower part of the graph
is close to 1%. Then a variation of .2% of Perl is not meaningful. Don't get
too happy now, and if next month it goes down .3% don't get sad.

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kjackson
It really isn't coming back, and I hope it never does. Becoming a Perl expert
is pretty career limiting, because you will need to learn another language at
some point, and none of them are perl-like so you gain no advantage being a
master with perl.

~~~
sly_g
Actually, JavaScript is a lot like Perl.
[http://www.ocpsoft.org/opensource/javascript-is-the-new-
perl...](http://www.ocpsoft.org/opensource/javascript-is-the-new-perl/)

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nickysielicki
perl was never gone baby!

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Jedd
No.

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claudiug
I never trust in tiobe. Never ever ever :)

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iends
Not if you believe in using the best tools for the job.

~~~
feld
Are you implying that Perl is never the best tool?

~~~
iends
Perl is rarely the best tool.

~~~
cygx
Any single language is only rarely the best tool. Or do you have discovered
the silver bullet of programming languages?

