Re: Are Perl and the dynamic languages dead or what ?

Since statistics are generally hard to believe anyway, I'll muddy the waters with some anecdotal info. Based on some postings here on Perlmonks such as Developer::Perl::Find and contact with manager types I know in Perl shops, there are jobs out there. These folks are actually having a hard time finding Perl talent with enough experience. I've heard of a similar situation in Seattle, Chicago, Boston, New York City area, and New Jersey. Andy Lester did a whole session on how to get a job at YAPC and OSCON last year partially to increase the quality of applicants for his openings.

I work in a Perl shop in Buffalo and we recently had some openings. Most of the people who responded didn't have close to enough Perl experience, and that was mainly what we were looking for.

Final anecdote is a Buffalo PM member who moved out to Arizona and within a few weeks had a job in a Perl shop doing all Perl.

Statistically, none of this means anything, but for me personally it's evidence that Perl is quite healthy.

Comment on Re: Are Perl and the dynamic languages dead or what ?

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Re^2: Are Perl and the dynamic languages dead or what ? by adrianh (Chancellor) on Jun 27, 2005 at 00:39 UTC
These folks are actually having a hard time finding Perl talent with enough experience. ... Statistically, none of this means anything, but for me personally it's evidence that Perl is quite healthy. Depends on the reason. I know some people who're having a heck of a job finding decent COBOL programmers. Doesn't mean that COBOL is a healthy language. Being able to hire decent developers is one of the major factors in picking a language for a project. I know of one successful Perl based e-commerce server that moved over to C++ because the development team had a roomful of good C++ developers and couldn't find any good Perl developers.	[reply]
Re^2: Are Perl and the dynamic languages dead or what ? by shiza (Hermit) on Jun 27, 2005 at 20:49 UTC
My experience with the market has been similar. It seems that the demand for experienced Perl programmers is greater than the number of experienced Perl programmers who are looking for a new position.	[reply]