Re^3: Where are future senior programmers coming from?

good OO programmers who program in Java are generally more interested in remaining Java programmers than they are in becoming Perl programmers

Sure, but not everyone is so loyal to a language. I know I'm not loyal to Perl and have taken jobs that didn't involve it. Opening your doors wider is bound to improve your odds.

The second problem is, of course, how to identify them.

All the standard interviewing advice applies. Getting candidates to talk about how they solve problems is usually the gist of it. You try to find people who are interested in programming, rather than just looking for a paycheck.

How would you propose organizing a Perl team to take advantage of Perl's strengths, yet have room for the mentoring that a smart junior programmer needs?

The usual things seems to work: code reviews, scanning the checkin e-mails from Subversion, holding regular meetings, letting people choose what they want to work on, paying for books and conferences, encouraging participation in open source projects, etc.

Comment on Re^3: Where are future senior programmers coming from?

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Re^4: Where are future senior programmers coming from? by tilly (Archbishop) on Sep 07, 2006 at 18:06 UTC
It isn't that they are necessarily loyal to Java. It is that they have heard such bad things about Perl that they don't want to go there.	[reply]
Re^5: Where are future senior programmers coming from? by Anonymous Monk on Sep 07, 2006 at 19:23 UTC
There's also the effort of memorizing a littany of new syntax, terminology, functions, libraries; plus all the odd little exceptions, fine distinctions, and corners cases that might possibly crop up. Anyone who thinks they can memorize and intuitively and instictively understand every single possible aspect of the Perl language in less than five years is kidding themselves. Just reading and memorizing everything that exists on CPAN (let alone learning how to use it) can take months! It takes a long, long time before you can legitimately put the word "Perl", or "Java" on a resume. It had better be worth the effort by the time you get done. The job market isn't good for Perl these days.	[reply]
Re^6: Where are future senior programmers coming from? by tilly (Archbishop) on Sep 08, 2006 at 01:09 UTC
If you need to memorize and intuitively and instinctively understand the whole language (including all possible external libraries) to use it at a given organization, then that organization has serious problems. I have personally mentored competent programmers with no Perl background, and it takes a lot less than 5 years for them to become productive. It only takes a couple of weeks, max. Over time they will become more productive, but it doesn't take long. In fact I'd wager that a good programmer with no Perl will become productive working in a good codebase far faster than an OK Perl programmer will. (In a bad codebase, of course, nobody is productive.)	[reply]