On the scale of subjective questions… :P

I rambled on the topic here a few days ago: Re: Tiobe index - Perl is having a hard time. I mostly work with Catalyst but Dancer2 and Mojolicious are both popular options. I think Perl excels as a first language because it is unconstrained by dogma or technical focus. Procedural, functional, OO, Ook, whatever you want, however you think, Perl can accommodate.

There are quite a few empty desks for Perl jobs. They are not everywhere though so moving or being so good and reliable you can telecommute might be necessary. Last time my group needed to hire it took months to find any half-way decent, emphasis on the half-way, candidates and this was in a tech Mecca for a position with good benefits and salary at a large, non-startup, old money company.

Keep in mind that anyone who is proficient in more than one language is going to have an advantage in the code game no matter when the next pandemic what happens with Perl.

So yes, in this sense, it's a very good investment.

(update: rephrased on Eily's request. ;)

But I believe there is no niche for Perl-programmers that you could fill.

There are of course still Perl-jobs to be found, but mostly for people with lots of experience.

Without any commercial experience, just claiming to be an expert on Perl your cv goes straight to the bin - even if your really are an expert.

You may of course be lucky, so I guess it depends on your set of mind.

If you want to enter a lottery, go for it.

If you want a career in it that you can plan forget about Perl as an investment, that's sad but it's how I see it.

What does it mean to be an expert in perl/anything, but not have job experience? How do you get job without experience? The idea of learn one thing get job in it is very appealing to me but fantasy. You always gotta learn more and prove it.

What does it mean to be an expert in perl/anything, but not have job experience?

"Job experience" is not the same as "experience". Many would see the phrase "job experience" and understand that pay was exchanged for services.

However, one may gain experience outside of the corporate world, especially in OSS. I suspect significant contributions to CPAN and the Core were made by folks who don't get paid for Perl. But many of those would be experts.

I didn't get paid for Perl for 15 years after I started mucking about with it on my own. Even then, no one cared that it was Perl. And I don't think I'm an expert at any of it, but I'm able to identify the parts of the engine, diagnose a few things, and subsequently know when to call in a domain expert.

If someone puts down "X years contributing to Perl" or "X years skulking at Perl Monks", or even "X years teaching colleagues and going to conferences", and has some evidence to back it up, that's experience.

-QM
--
Quantum Mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of