Help me to be more biased towards Perl (or not)

[Ian Docherty]

Matt S Trout wrote:
> On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 09:51:01AM +0100, Nicholas Clark wrote:
>   
>> [Assumption here being that it's easier to cross from PHP to Perl than from
>> PHP to Java. But you'll need to find slightly more than my zero facts to
>> back this up]
>>     
>
> We trained a smart PHP guy from minimal perl up to competency very easily;
> within about four weeks he was steaming along with Cat/DBIC/TT and assorted
> CPAN modules he dragged in, pausing only to cry about only needing 1/10 as
> much code now and wondering why he'd wasted so much time re-inventing wheels
> before due to being stuck with a lossy language.
>
> Sadly, he's now mostly only doing HTML/CSS stuff for us because he's getting
> organised to go back into academentia to play with lasers, but the "four weeks"
> and "1/10 SLOC" figures may be of use to you - you now have zero facts and
> one anecdote :)
>   
Indeed, I have also *upgraded* some people exactly like that, in spite 
of them being 4000 miles away and only being able to talk to them for 2 
hours a day. Unfortunately they left the company for twice the pay they 
were on with us which is why we are now looking at alternatives.

I think the main information I am looking for is other 'measurable' 
facts, such as how long would it take someone to develop a web 
application in Perl/Catalyst compared to Java, Dot-Net. Do people here 
have enough grasp of several languages to give a meaningful answer?