http://www.paulgraham.com/javacover.html

Java is a language that sucks the life and soul out of you (queue rebuttal from sporty), a language to keep mediocre programmers from doing something dangerous (they bury, omit, or obfuscate powerful features and make what-should-be-the cool-things difficult -- RMI and JNI for instance), and quality programmers from doing something revolutionary. It's a business app language, basically, far from the academic, whiz-bang, or workhorse languages that we love for practical development. Java, essentially, is Cobolish.

Plus you, like I, probably have a job where you can't express creativity ... Java isn't designed by that. You use what Sun gives you, in a nice constrained space. Like VB. I think Perl programmers are drawn to Perl because of the power and fun it provides, and it's hard to find this in other languages. So I post on a Perl forum while I mostly code java. And I need to get out of cube farm ville, I hate it, but at least it payed for my $3000 mountain bike :)

Java is a fad. We only have to wait. Maybe more functional/creative languages will take over.

I, too, am a fan of Paul Graham's website (since I never met Mr. Graham, I can't say whether or not I'm a fan of him personally), and have enjoyed reading his non-traditional success story(ies) and opinions.

It's plain that Java was designed to encapsulate the developer; it's a blessing and a curse. I like the overall syntax and feel of Java; I hate the way objects seem to get in the way (funny, Smalltalk never seemed to get in the way...).

After a few years of consideration, I have to agree that Java is simply a business-app language. It is a vast improvement over COBOL, but essentially in the same genre.

I suspect that to get a more interesting job, I have to get out of the business app business.

A letter from accross the water

I'm not sure if this is good or bad really but I have fallen into Perl as not to many people here in Britain seem to won't to do it. The company I am currently contracted to could only find 3 people in the country with the correct skills to do the job, dispite advertising and using agencies.

I really tried hard to get a Java job, as I had spent a long time learning it, and belived it to be the future(I fell for the hype on that one). I'm really enjoying the Perl work but do get a bit frustrated at times. But it seems to be a lucky accident that I get paid for doing Perl especially as a very quick search on a UK site returned 253 jobs needing Perl skills and 50 of those where in London and the South East.

Remember Britain is very small

update Think about a job in Britain for a while I can recommend it.

It's good to hear you say that Java is a fad because I don't know Java, but there are more Java jobs, and with some of the not-so-good comments I've been hearing about Perl 6, I would recommend that someone learn Java instead of Perl if they had to choose, even if they think they want to do mostly web work.

I could imagine people reading the reviews of Perl 6 when it comes out and hearing of the complaints, which are already circulating, and the bugs. People will base their opinion of Perl on Perl 6 and might choose something else. And who knows how Python and others will improve. Perl's future might not be secure.

I got lucky. To get out of fast food, I took the first computer-related job I could get... and lo, it is a good one. My employer expresses no opinion about which programming languages I should use, so naturally I use Perl for most of my programming needs. (Note, however, that programming is only a component of my job; I also get to do various other things, since I'm the whole IT department, and these days (since the Program Coordinator quit and hasn't been replaced) I'm also the graphic design and desktop publishing department... I work for a fairly small employer. Try it some time; it's fun.)

So, I have to do other things too, but I do get to do quite a bit of work with Perl.

It's only fun until you realize that small businesses often have resource constraints. This means less chances for advancement (if the company is small there'e not much room at the top unless it's adding employees - my $dayjob is not) and less $$$ for professional growth (conferences, training, etc - I still haven't been to OSCON after 5 years).

Don't get me wrong - small businesses definitely have their benefits. But just make sure you see both sides of the coin. :-)

Sounds like you have a good job. You have the opportunity to grow into a wide variety of leadership-level responsibilities which all IT departments have to deal with. Except managing subordinates, of course.

I would think that if you enjoy your job, and have occasional opportunities (or just room) to grow, then you're pretty much set. I can't think of a better place to be; your only concern might be in staying relevant to the rest of the programming industry, and I suspect most of us tend to be a bit slack in that area. Probably requires attending meetings, or conferences, or something like that. Building and managing your network, you know.

You can also make use of one of your local Perl mongers groups.

Thank you for the creative suggestion. I had thought about using my own LISP interpreter (written in Java) to contain business logic in our apps, or Jython, or Beanshell, etc etc; unfortunately, I understand that the reason they insist on Java is precisely because there are many people who know Java; thus this small company can find a replacement when a programmer leaves. Moving logic off to a language which is not Java defeats this purpose.

And it's posted on jobs.perl.org, too. But I'm not going to turn this into a sales pitch... I just want to say: keep looking, there is work out there.

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Thank you for the encouragement. If I had friends in New England who wanted to do perl I'd send them your way. As it turns out, I have friends up there who are technical, but do not do perl. Alas.