The best career move is the one that makes you happy.

Who cares if Java is better than Perl, Perl is better the Java, this is better than that, and so on? Which one is going to make you happier? Don't think that going for the money is going to be the big factor in that: I know plenty of miserable people making more money than they have time to spend.

Here's a question I've been tossing around to people I know: Do you think most Java people are in it for the money or the joy of programming? I've known a lot of Java people, and a lot of them aren't programming anymore. They didn't really like Java all that much, and they didn't like programming all that much. This isn't a representative sample, it's just this notion that I have: these people wanted to be "computer programmers", so they found out what computer programmers did and did that. The "that" was Java. It's sorta like a kid who thinks he wants to be a fireman (or pirate or astronaut) before they even know what the job is.

I've met relatively few people who do Perl because that's what the job happened to be, and I teach Perl for a living so I've run into a lot of people starting their Perl careers. Again, that's a self-selected sample, so it's not representative either. I've just noticed a different mindset. It's one of the reasons Perl Mongers works, I think.

No matter what you choose to do, you can always learn something else. There's no reason you can't move to some other language other than Perl (or Java or whatever). A real programmer will know one language very well, a lot of languages reasonably well, and even more on a casual level. Real programmers don't have to put a language qualifer in front of "programmer". Indeed, as Randal has mentored me to where I am today, he's made me learn other languages ("Let's do this is Smalltalk!").

So, decide what makes you happy, and don't let anyone convince you otherwise. If Java makes you happy, find a Java job. If Perl makes you happy, do Perl. Don't let anyone tell you what *should* make you happy though. :)