the "no good Perl jobs"/"no good Perl programmers" myth

[Nicholas Clark]

On Mon, Aug 07, 2006 at 02:58:08PM +0100, Peter Hickman wrote:

> We asked the question "What's wrong with Perl?" and, unless you are 
> Larry Wall, MJD, Damien Conway or a select few, the wrong answer is 
> "nothing, it's perfect". Especially if you can't back it up.
> 
> Hint: Perl 6 cannot be better that perfect.

I'm sure that for the 3 you list, they wouldn't say "nothing"
Clearly Larry and Damian think there are things to improve on in Perl 5,
else why would they invest so much time on Perl 6, when they could be
doing other fun stuff? I don't have any specific idea of what MJD would
improve, but I'd not be surprised if he can think of some simple changes
that would improve functional programming support. Oh, and he'd definitely
like some bugs fixed, given that he's a contender in the "most open bugs"
stakes. (Along with (at least) me, Ton and Abigail)

> A graduate is likely to have Java and it is easier to assess their 
> skills. I will have nothing said against the Java programmers we have 

That's an interesting observation. How does one assess Perl ability correctly,
reliably and with minimal risk (as perceived by the management)?
I don't have a good answer to that. I'm curious what the london.pm hive mind
thinks.

Nicholas Clark