Alternative sources of Perl programmers

[Dave Hodgkinson]

1. Who are "you"?
2. Agents. There's your first problem.
3. Are you doing anything interesting?
4. Your CTO


Perl is only a programming language. There's ruby, python and *spit* PHP. People learn them too. One of the companies around here doing very cool things hire programmers and then pervert them with Perl.

Sent from my iPhone

On 13 May 2013, at 22:22, "Duncan Garland" <duncan.garland at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> 
> 
> We're advertising for a Perl programmer again, and once again we are
> struggling. It's a shame because we've got quite a lot of development work
> in the offing, mostly using Catalyst, DBIx::Class, Moose and the like.
> 
> 
> 
> I spoke to the agent today and asked why so few people are coming forward.
> His view was that there aren't many Perl vacancies about at the moment, and
> even fewer people are interested in them.
> 
> 
> 
> What are other companies doing about this?
> 
> 
> 
> We've got several PHP projects on the go as well. It's easier to get local
> PHP programmers and when we can't, there seems to be a constant supply of
> good Eastern European programmers. Why isn't there the same stream of
> Eastern European Perl programmers?
> 
> 
> 
> A second possibility is to cross-train experienced programmers from other
> languages into Perl. However, Perl has got itself such a reputation for
> being difficult to learn that the CTO winces whenever I suggest the idea.
> How have other companies got on when they've said that they will take
> experience in Python/Django or Ruby/Rails or whatever in lieu of experience
> in Perl/Catalyst? Was anybody interested and did they succeed?
> 
> 
> 
> The third possibility is just to move some of the projects ear-marked for
> Perl into the PHP camp. I don't really believe that they can't be done in
> PHP, but it's a pity because they sit nicely with similar successful
> projects we've done in Perl. (A Catalyst-based system of ours won an
> industry-wide prize for "Best Digital Initiative" a couple of months ago.)
> 
> 
> 
> All the best.
> 
> 
> 
> Duncan
> 
> 
> 
> 
>