in reply to How is the Perl job market and what skills are focused upon?

My advice would be to use the most modern tooling Perl provides for whatever you are doing. If you are programming object classes, use an OOP framework like Moo and Type::Tiny. If you are building on a database, use DBIx::Class. If you are working with HTML use a proper DOM parser like Mojo::DOM. If you are building APIs use a modern application framework like Dancer or Mojo. Use Git, test everything using Perl's testing framework, make an S3 bucket and upload stuff to it, etc, etc. In other words, don't be a hacker. Be a modern Perl-experienced software engineer, the first and last part of which is what will get you hired.

At work we use Perl for almost 100% of what we do and we are always hiring software engineers. Today the questions are about concepts: do you know OOP design? Do you know REST design? Do you use an ORM? Do you test your code? ... far more than about specific language experience. Theoretically we would take someone with no Perl experience, although that has not happened yet. We *have* hired people with rusty Perl experience who have been doing the same kind of work in Ruby or Python, however, and have -- in whatever language -- developed their conceptual knowledge and skills as engineers.

And keeping your Perl skills up to date means that you will always be able to produce the "glue" scripts and one-off reporting that Perl has always been best for. Only nowadays, newer tooling in Perl allows you to produce such stuff even more concisely and quickly.

Hope this rambling helps!


The way forward always starts with a minimal test.
  • Comment on Re: How is the Perl job market and what skills are focused upon?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: How is the Perl job market and what skills are focused upon?
by GotToBTru (Prior) on Nov 19, 2021 at 23:17 UTC
    I understood all of that except for the S3 bucket, but Google fixed that.

    Stuck with 5.8.8 at work! Ugh. But no reason not to put together a modern setup at home and get familiar with what the 21st Century has to offer.

    But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8 (NASB)

Re^2: How is the Perl job market and what skills are focused upon?
by pritesh_ugrankar (Monk) on Dec 27, 2020 at 01:10 UTC

    Hi,

    Thank you for taking time to write such a fabulous answer. If this is what you call rambling, then I can only request you to "Ramble On" (one of my favourite Led Zep songs). While other tips were helpful, this was straight to the point and explanatory. Never a day when I've left this place without sound and real life advice.

    Thank you once again.