It would take longer for an experienced Java/C/C++ programmer to become an excellent Perl programmer than it would a college intern. A Perl expert has a mindset that a static language developer simply cannot understand. Now, if you had said Lisp or Python or Ruby programer ...

This is not to say that you should hire the intern over the Java/C/C++ programmer. I've worked with C-in-Perl and Java-in-Perl many times. While I might cringe at the use of parallel arrays instead of hashes and for(;;) instead of foreach(), the code worked, had been working for years, and was reasonably bug-free.

I think you're asking two questions - expertise and usefulness. Of course, an experienced programmer will always be useful, regardless of retraining needs. They will just take longer to become an expert than if you started with a tabula rasa.

My criteria for good software:
  1. Does it work?
  2. Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?

In reply to Re: How much time to become a good Perl programmer ? by dragonchild
in thread How much time to become a good Perl programmer ? by szabgab

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