Re: a good career choice ?

Larz wrote:

>>
>> At this point, most language debates come down to opinion and
>> assumption.  I don't believe that Perl is an old language that's
>> going
>> to fade away, while ruby becomes more popular.  But, that's just my
>> own
>> view/opinion.  I wasn't saying it because it's more mature and has
>> some
>> existing modules that maybe don't exist for Ruby or anything.  I
>> might be wrong about how in demand Perl will or will not be, just
>> like my
>> opinion abut ruby and other languages.  Neither opinion will make it
>> more or less likely, so we'll all have to see.  Just remember, there
>> are plenty of new jobs in Perl, too (not just older code people are
>> hired to maintain).
>> --
> 
>  There will be work in perl for many years no doubt, before I found
> out about ruby I had many perl books and was up in the air if I'd
> rather look for work in Java or Perl, but I would characterize perl
> this way:
> 
> 
>  There's programmers who like to believe ruby is just hype and some
> sort of cult and don't want to spend the time to learn something new
> or even just find out about it, they have a strong attachment to what
> they already know.
> 
>   There are many people who have no interest in learning anything new
> if they have to spend their own time and money studying it. They will
> only learn new things if the company tells them to or sends them to a
> class, or maybe if they are desperate and need to find a job.
> 
>   Managers who see training people in new things or asking them to
> learn new things as something of a problem .. They want to hire people
> who have all the skills they need and try to stick with whatever skill
> sets their workers already have. People trying to advocate new
> technology may be ostracized. I worked with a number of people who
> refused to learn perl and wanted to do everything with shell scripts,
> and they wrote giant unwieldy ugly shell scripts that where totally
> laughable, and yet management accepted their lame explanations of why
> it would take them several weeks to get some project to work
> correctly. I could not say anything to the contrary as it was all
> political and I would have gotten in trouble.
> 
>  Then there are sysadmins who write an occasional perl script and have
> no real incentive to go beyond that, that may be fairly understandable
> as long as they don't have to develop alot of large apps.
> 
>  So there maybe alot of legacy perl code out there, and all of the
> people mentioned above are not really programmers who have their heart
> in programming enough to want to use the best technology and try to
> excel towards excellence in development based on object oriented
> programming and paradign that's validity can't be denied, though they
> will try to anyway.
> 
>  Sometimes you are stuck on a machine that the admins won't let you
> install what you want to use, but other than that I would never want
> to work at a company that wanted to develop some new app in perl.
> 
>  If the economy was to be so bad that you had to learn old technology
> to get a job, that would seem sad, though the IT industry has all
> kinds of ups and downs. One year you might hear college students are
> shying away from CS because of the poor IT sector, a few years later
> they'll say IT jobs are the future ..

Your entire response is based on your own opinions.  I don't recall care
if people like is dislike any certain language, but just like saying
people in other languages claim ruby is all hype, there are those that
buy into the claim that languages like Perl are fading away --
especially when you say things like "I would never want to work at a
company that wanted to develop some new app in perl."  That's
preposterous.  You can replace Perl in that sentence with PHP, C, C++,
Python, Java, etc.  It's all personal view.

In fact, one could say the same thing about another language and use
"ruby" in the example of "never wanting to work at a company that uses
ruby".  The passion, ignorance and arrogance regarding "language wars"
goes both ways.  It's pretty short sighted to call Perl "old
technology" because you happen to like Ruby more.  I don't know why
people can't be more reasonable and less biased.  I prefer Perl, but
I'm not here talking badly about ruby -- I'm here because I use it,
too.  Therefore, there's no reason to get defensive or think you need
to slam another language.  Perl is hardly old, just because it's older. 
Ruby has been around for a very long time as well, so I guess by your
logic, it's technically ran its course, too?

Seriously, who cares?  No one said the OP should learn Perl instead of
ruby, and of course there will be support and bias toward ruby, since
this is a ruby group.  It's all about choice and preference.  If you
want to get down to the base of the debate that appears to have evolved
from the question (big surprise there), then people shouldn't be
encouraged to use a different language just because someone else finds
it interesting, or because it is newer (that doesn't make it better). 
That's usually the reason why, and people shouldn't drop the idea of
developing a project in languages they know well, just to code in a
newer language someone else is excited about.  The project should be
coded the most efficient, secure and stable as possible, which means
sticking to what you know.  If you know ruby better, use ruby.  If you
have the time and find ruby interesting, learn it anyway.  It never
hurts to get good at something you might not be good at now (in which
case a lot of people could actually benefit from learning Perl, or PHP,
or Java, if they know ruby and have the desire and motivation to learn
something else).

As for legacy code, there are a lot of languages that have legacy code,
some not very good -- and that includes ruby.  Some people can code
well and some can not.  Some people abandon code and some do not.  I
really fail to see how one has to do with another.  If you like heavy
OO type programming languages, then yeah, ruby would probably suit you
better than Perl or PHP.  If you don't agree or don't care, then there
are a lot of other languages that work equally as well, which aren't
going anywhere.  In closing, check the statistics and there are a lot
more larger sites that most people online use daily that are developed
in Perl (yes, new code developed today and more yesterday), being so
much for your theory that you'd not work for any company that developed
new applications in Perl.  You may as well denounce any new
applications coded in Python, PHP, C, C++, Java, too.  I get it, you
like ruby, you don't care for Perl, that's fine with me, but keep the
claims on level and fair.  There's no anti-ruby witch hunting in this
thread, so practice what you preach.  Since no one's coming up with
untrue reasons why ruby isn't for them, why state your opinion about
Perl as being factual?  Don't be so closed minded that you trash talk
languages you don't agree with, because it makes you no better than the
Perl programmers you mention whom unfairly trash talk ruby.  They are
both good languages and neither are going anywhere.
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