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

[Adrian Howard]

On 7 Aug 2006, at 15:47, Nicholas Clark wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 07, 2006 at 03:41:51PM +0100, Adrian Howard wrote:
>
>> Because:
>>
>> a) it costs money to train folk, and many companies seem keener to
>> change platform/language than spend that money.
>
> As if changing platform doesn't cost money? Or is it that you can't  
> directly
> quantify it, therefore it can be assumed to be zero, even if it's not?

I never said it was a sensible decision ;-)

It is a pattern I've seen again and again though. About the only  
exception being various Large Financial Institutions (who in one  
instance that I know of have an in-house compiler team to keep their  
local language-of-choice going :-)

>> b) the smart programmers coming straight out of university don't want
>> to learn Perl
>
> Why don't they want to learn it? Because other technology seems  
> new, hip and
> exciting?

Yeah. I think that's a fair summary (and in some instances s/seems/is/).

Cheers,

Adrian