Wow Deja Vu. I basically had this conversation with someone else(a college graduate).

There is nothing wrong with commiting "betrayal" in the computing world since the computing world can betray you as it keeps changing all the time.

Skill and knowledge enhancment is personal gain and you are foolish to think it is a bad thing. You like having a job right?

Well many moons ago I used to be a master of the old Tandem Mainframe. I can make this claim as the company I worked for back then beta tested many of Tandem's core software. Well I thought nothing would ever change and refused to learn anything else as Tandem would never disappear!

We all know what happened with PCs, Unix and the Net

When the downsizing of the 1980s happened in the US, I found myself without a job and had mastery of something nobody wanted. It took 2 months to get a job as a junior system admin. Luckily I found a manager who saw that I would amount to something and threw everything at me. These days I am a Wan Engineer.

So I guess what I am trying to tell you, learn as much as possible. It is fine to love Perl but don't worship it. Someday *gasp* it could get replaced.

Knowing many things makes you much more marketable in the job world.