But the truth is that good programmers are so rare, that job descriptions tend to "fish" everywhere, in the hope to easily train the haul to swim in a new pond.

One of my last clients was even actively looking for PHP coders to be able to train them on Perl.

I dare saying a versatile Perl programmer can easily adapt, because of its TIMTOWTDI tendency to cover a maximum of paradigms, he has seen most concepts already.

But the truth is that good programmers are so rare, that job descriptions tend to "fish" everywhere

...and, of course, all the best programmers are in their heart and core, Perl programmers ;)

> I can't imagine a firm that size having zero Perl programmers.

I fear it's not a matter of size but age. I started working in a relatively new company (started in 2009) that has a few thousand employees and we have less than 20 perl scripts in the whole codebase.

map{substr$_->[0],$_->[1]||0,1}[\*||{},3],[[]],[ref qr-1,-,-1],[{}],[sub{}^*ARGV,3]

Still, it's not a company attempting to rule all markets.

There are Unix/Linux flavors and products like Git partly depending on Perl, you need a minimum expertise in house.

Of course this also applies to others, which try to outsource these needs to contractors abroad for dumping prices.

Heard stories like this from one IBM department, which has a big mail-processing code base in Perl.

But that's a very dangerous strategy IMHO.

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the 𐍀𐌴𐍂𐌻 Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery}

While all of that is true there is an irrational hostility toward Perl that sometimes makes people choose other options even when Perl is the best and easiest for a given task.

there is an irrational hostility toward Perl

From my very limited experience, it seems to mostly come from people who are extolling Python

Maybe not a lot of project work, but there's Perl in odd places

Of course. I don't use Perl on the $applications (or should I say @applications) I'm working on; they're in C#, C++, Java. But I still use perl a lot, for crafting my own tools and one-off data munging jobs, etc. My point is, if "Google considers Perl a useful skill", it's not (I guess) because they have Perl projects they need programmers for. But ICBW, IOA. ;-)

they may also be using Perl for portable scripts

I am very skeptical.

> IOA. ;-)
• IOA Independent Olympic Athlete
• IOA Islands of Adventure (Universal Studios theme park)
• IOA International Oversight Advisory (fictional, TV series Stargate)
?

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the 𐍀𐌴𐍂𐌻 Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery}

update

IOW?