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Re: Is Perl a good career move?

by Anonymous Monk
on Jan 13, 2005 at 15:34 UTC ( [id://421996]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Is Perl a good career move?

No, it's not a good career move. But the fact that it's not a good career move has not much to do with the language.

Positioning yourself as a "X language programmer" is IMO not a good career move, although for a very few languages (C, Pascal (70s/early 80s), C++ (80s), Java (late 90s), perhaps .NET (00s)), and a timeframe much smaller than the average length of a career (a few years vs 35 to 40 years) its doable. Although you position yourself as not flexible.

Gazillions of Perl programs are written by people who aren't on the payrole as a "Perl programmer". Instead, they have a much broader function (and hopefully that reflects in the amount of money they can bring to the pub), and they wield Perl as one of their tools. Perhaps their most important tool.

To make an analogy, do you think it's a good career move to position yourself as a "hammer wielder"? Or do you think that it's better to become a "carpenter"?

You can't move from Perl to .NET, VB, or really even C
I'd say that C is the closest relative of Perl, and that the more you know Perl, the easier it is to code in C. And some things are easier in C than in Perl.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: Is Perl a good career move?
by bluto (Curate) on Jan 13, 2005 at 17:11 UTC
    This is right on, ++. A career is much bigger than the languages you know; it's about the kind of work you want to do and being competant enough to know and use the right tools. If you are doing the right kind of work, you will probably enjoy using the tools, even when they change.

    I've used C for a long time, and could still find work with it if I wanted (it was supposed to have died off long ago due to C++). While it was the best tool for the kind of work I was doing, I enjoyed using it. As my work content changed, it became cumbersome. I found Perl was a much more efficient tool, and now I use it and enjoy it.

Re^2: Is Perl a good career move?
by Errto (Vicar) on Jan 14, 2005 at 03:41 UTC
    Anonymous Monk++. (and by the way I don't normally upvote anonymous nodes because it's kind of a waste of a vote). Banking your career on a single general-purpose programming language is downright foolish (I qualify it with "general-purpose" because there are people who make very productive and satisfactory careers as SAS programmers, but that's different). That said, the reality is that you will often find a job description that really attracts you but requires a language you don't really know. So I would suggest that you bone up on the language really quickly, send in a resume that emphasizes your broader skillset and experience, and if you're lucky enough to get an interview then go in there and prove to them that you're a good enough programmer to fit right in even if you don't have much experience with that particular language. Write up a simple program on the whiteboard or something. Granted, all this is easier said than done, but I definitely don't think it's worth fretting over "Perl is bad for my career" or some other such rubbish.

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