As a programmer who is comfortable in both Java and Perl, the question that seems more relevant to me is "why do Java programmers have so much corporate funding?" The answer, of course, is because Java programmers have Sun driving a huge PR machine that directly promotes their language. As a grant manager for the Perl foundation, I can only wish for something like that.

Anyway - since the question was asked... Every quarter there is a survey of jobs offered based on actual advertised rates of pay. TotalJobs (a UK recruitment organisation) have compiled the information so that you can plug in your skillset and see what you should be earning. I tried a couple of variations and determined that Perl jobs are being advertised at a higher rate than Java. Obviously different permutations of skills and experience may produce different reusults.

I have done some Java programming and Perl programming to get a paycheck. I was paid well, but not that well. I think a better question is: why do most actors and pop singers make the money they do? Talk about overpaid, they don't even have defensive linemen trying to crush them.

Most actors and pop singers are not overpaid. It's just that you don't know most actors and pop singers. You just know the top - and you generalize based on that.

Most NFL players on the other hand....

Have you ever seen an NFL game live? I'm a season ticket holder, and it's stunning when you see it live. Those guys are paid to sacrifice their bodies. I've read that NFL players, in spite of being in such great shape, have a life expectancy 10-15 years less than the national average because of the stress their bodies take. I've read that the average starting running back goes through the equivalent of a head-on interstate car collision each game.

Let's face it, people are paid what someone thinks they are worth: programmer, entertainer, lawyer, plumber, etc. To argue against that is, ultimately, an argument against freedom.

--
tbone1, YAPS (Yet Another Perl Schlub)
And remember, if he succeeds, so what.
- Chick McGee

As yet, Java does not have the track record for stability that other programming languages have. Although there is a lot of marketing momentum behind Java right now, until a defined and stable standard emerges, it is a high-risk option compared with standardized languages.

Ok, let's just assume this is all true and sensible.

The discussion I highlight above is an excellent reason to use C, Perl, Python, Ruby (etc.) in favor of Java, C++, C#, Visual Basic (etc.) on projects that are to be developed by a small team, and maintained for a prolonged period.

Since this is Perlmonks, I'm not going to discuss C, Python or Ruby. But I do want to discuss Perl. There's nothing wrong with Perl, but I don't think you should suggest it has attributes it doesn't have. Perl doesn't have a standard, and it doesn't have a track record of stability. In fact, in both deparments, it does worse than Java. Just look at two hot things of the last decade: threads and Unicode. Perl has had several thread implementations, and several Unicode implementations, and despite having worked on it for years, it still doesn't get it right.

Don't get me wrong, I'll pick Perl over Java 11 out of 10 times myself. But that's because Perl has so many goodies, I'm willing to deal with the fact Perl is a moving target, and upgrading to a new version isn't always painless.

But neither your post nor mine has anything to do with the original question.

Just look at two hot things of the last decade: threads and Unicode. Perl has had several thread implementations, and several Unicode implementations, and despite having worked on it for years, it still doesn't get it right.

Uhhh ... I've been programming exclusively in Perl for over 4 years and on and off for 8 years prior to that. I have never once programmed anything threaded. Ever. In fact, I would say that most programmers in the world have never knowingly handled threading issues.

And, no, I don't count Java's auto-threading of all applications to be relevant to the discussion. Threading is much harder than managing database connections and programmers writing in Java seem to get the latter wrong a heck of a lot more often than programmers writing in Perl.

As for Unicode ... what does 5.8.x not do that it should? (Discount regular expressions for a second because, AFAIK, Perl has the best Unicode regular expression support anywhere.) I work with web apps that have to seamlessly render pages in at least 5 languages, with one up to 12 languages. CJK, Arabic, and Latin-1 are all handled without a problem. More often than not, it's Oracle or Sybase that screws it up, not Perl.

Being right, does not endow the right to be rude; politeness costs nothing.
Being unknowing, is not the same as being stupid.
Expressing a contrary opinion, whether to the individual or the group, is more often a sign of deeper thought than of cantankerous belligerence.
Do not mistake your goals as the only goals; your opinion as the only opinion; your confidence as correctness. Saying you know better is not the same as explaining you know better.

Ok, the original question is: "Why is Perl programmer are well paid?"

This isn't a important question !

The real important question is: "What do Java Project do as compared to Perl Project ? What would be better ?"

Mago
mago@rio.pm.org

• The internet left the realm of ugly static html and became interactive with ugly CGI scripts. Much of this is thanks to perl. As companies put real systems on the internet they needed something better than that old ugly stuff, perl got a bad rap from alot of that old code. Java was shiny and new and promised to look good.
• Java has corporate marketing and sponsorship. This makes it legit. Perl is grassroots. This makes it ill-legit.
• Java is hard to learn. This makes you smarter and more valuable if you put it on your resume. Perl allows you to start with easy code and grow into things just as complex as Java, if you choose. Easy stuff isn't worth alot of money.
• Java has forced people to upgrade to 21 inch monitors in order to be able to read an entire line of wordy code. A 21" monitor is expensive, therefore, Java developers have had to ask for more more money, to buy better hardware. You can write perl anyway you want.
• Java requires alot of memory, but luckily memory is really cheap. Therefore, the java mantra has become, "ram is cheap, buy more." Perl projects as big as Java projects can also consume mucho amounts of ram, but the perl mantra is TMTOWTDI.
• A perl programmer can do anything, and may often try to prove it. A java programmer cannot churn out as much code as fast as a perl programmer, thus more developers are needed. Java is more expensive than perl, it must be better.

I also have never seen a poem wrote in Java.

I'm not sure whether the possibility of writing "poems" in Perl really means anything.

Perl can also be an OO language and is much faster depending on the job you are doing

Well, if language A is faster than language B depending on the job you are doing, doesn't that mean that language B is also faster than language A depending on the job you are doing? Assuming the change is zero that for a particular job, both languages are as fast, it means that for some, but not all, jobs, language A is faster. Hence, there are jobs for which language A isn't faster, and therefore, language B is faster.