Comment by revoltingx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by revoltingx | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Well, as a 24 year old PERL developer in Los Angeles I'm glad this is the case.

Many people underestimate the capabilities of the PERL MVC frameworks such as CGI::Application + Moose and the other ones.

I can bang out a proper MVC templated project with a proper OO structure and Beanstalk MQ backend for long running jobs with an AJAX interface that'll scale in about week. No sweat.

These tools make the recent Diaspora fiasco non-existant. They take of sanity checking, access checking, etc. at a lower level and you implement features in higher level classes. (For example I can store JSON in a DB column and automatically parse it when it's accesed like: $mytable->myjson->{'myvalue'} )

Need a barcode reader? Need a SOAP/JSON/etc library? Need clean database access API? Need a printing library? Need a PSD library? All in CPAN.

I wouldn't touch Rails with a 10 foot pole. PHP blows chunks. I'm able to be picky when it comes to jobs

I've gotten my PERL jobs through craigslist. I'm honestly not aware of a better medium to find PERL jobs. Been programming in PERL since I was 14 (so 10 years) and I'm so happy I don't have to sweat for a job. I'm actually currently living off my previous job's savings because it paid that well.

Also note that I never even finished High School.

In short, I don't know why they haven't been able to find PERL programmers. I guess because the newer generation of developers don't realize how awesome it is.

PS: Looking for a short-term PERL project in Los Angeles, check out my resume: http://careers.stackoverflow.com/therevoltingx

Protip: you'll get more people interested in you if you spell it Perl instead of PERL. Despite appearances, 'Perl' is not an acronym, there are backronyms for it, but that doesn't mean its an acronym.

I say this only because you give the illusion of knowing something about what you are talking about, and its merely sad to me that you can use Perl for 10 years and never learn this.

( And sadly, not knowing Perl is not an acronym looks bad to people who know different, and thus instantly assume you're not very experienced in Perl )

I spend much less time speaking or writing about PERL than I do writing PERL code.

Note, I'm well aware that PERL is not an acronym. I ALWAYS spell it like that because I like to make it pop in my sentences. Frankly, if an employer is turned away by the way I spell PERL then I don't want to work for them.

My work speaks for itself.

The thing is, savvy folk know it's Perl and not PERL and regardless of your work, it indicates a lack of knowledge of the community.

I really don't communicate with the Perl community at all. I write code, I send bug reports or bug fixes if things are broken. I really don't see how interacting with the Perl community would be relevant to an employer from an engineering point of view.

At that point it's not 'savvy' people who know that, but silly people who have too much time to complain or notice small things like that. Possibly managers or scripters, not engineers who go only by code, architecture, etc.

Tip for you. The language is named Perl. And a lot of people use it as a quick filter to tell whether someone has actually encountered the Perl community.

Check out perlfaq1 if you doubt me.

I don't spell PERL, PERL because it's an acronym. I spell it as such because it's that awesome it needs to stand out.

That's fine. I'm just warning you that many of the awesome developers and best Perl shops out there will put a strike against you for getting it wrong. But if you wish to hurt yourself, go right ahead.

I agree with Ben. I don't hire people who can't (or won't) spell the name of technologies correctly, whether it's "PERL", "Redhat", or "Postgre".

Well, good luck finding good developers whos primary language isn't English. Or developers who treat writing non-code sentences as a waste of time.

Point of curiosity. Do you have any clue who chromatic is? Or what his role in the Perl community is?

I guarantee you that there is no shortage of good developers who's primary language is not English who would love to work with chromatic.

I don't know, nor care, who chromatic is. I was simply implying that there are developers like me who can write more code than speak or write English. It's pretty silly to filter candidates based on how they spell something, unless it's blatantly bad of course.

I couldn't care less what other developers thought of me. As long as my code works and works well and others can work with it. I'm happy.

However, I do appreciate and will take your advice into consideration. I do only talk to my immediate co-workers about code, and 90% of my code is closed-source.

I see it as a matter of accuracy and humility. People who care about precision and accuracy and getting the little details right make good coworkers. People who care about communicating effectively and who can adapt to the prevailing conventions of the rest of the team on matters of opinion also make good coworkers.

You can be right and you can be stubborn, but I respect that when you're stubborn and right and not merely stubborn because you want to be right.

But how are you going to get new Perl jobs on CraigsList now that they've banned the dirty sections? Sorry ... left Perl for Python in the late '90s. Clean syntax and Zope and Plone for frameworks even then!

Python is one language I wish I would have learned, but I didn't want to waste my time with it. It's not good or enticing enough. I wish I'd get paid for writing Erlang code already!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com