in reply to Can Perl be more than a hobby language?
- There's more important things in life than making money. Enjoying what you're working at is one of them.
- There are many jobs on the server side which make use of perl. Especially the unix server side. In big and small companies.
- If you like unix, I would recommend learning the big three: C, shell (ksh/bash/zsh/etc), and a "scripting" language (perl/python/ruby/etc). Each of the three is a critical component which supplements and cooperates with the others.
- My own preference in "scripting" languages is perl, which, although not as clean as ruby, has many advantages, such as being ubiquitous on unix servers, just like vi is.
- You can learn java, php, javascript, etc. if you're interested in web programming. But if you're not interested, there are other paths you can take.