We all know that Perl is great, but some recent discussions have got me thinking: is Perl a good career move?

I have friends who have about the same amount of experience as me, but program in Java, earn more money and, (most importantly) have more career options open. I have a good job, but when it comes time to move on, will there be a Perl position waiting for me? My friends know for sure there'll be Java positions.

Another problem is that Perl is kind of a dead end in terms of moving to other languages. One of my Java programming friends was initially a Smalltalk developer, but was easily able to move languages. I'm not sure an employer would be as convinced about a Perl developer doing the same thing (I'm not saying it's not possible, or even difficult, but it's what a potential employer thinks that matters). You can't move from Perl to .NET, VB, or really even C

If you knew a recent graduate, who knew a little Perl and a little Java, which career path would you suggest they take?

I know there are a lot of Perl jobs out there, and there probably will continue to be for some time, but why would anyone choose it as a career path, other than that's what you knew?

In reply to Is Perl a good career move? by Mutant

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.