Re^5: Where are future senior programmers coming from?

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.

Comment on Re^5: Where are future senior programmers coming from?

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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]

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Re^6: Where are future senior programmers coming from?
by tilly (Archbishop) on Sep 08, 2006 at 01:09 UTC

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.)

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