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Re: Perl Jobs on offer
by friedo (Prior) on Nov 29, 2008 at 02:51 UTC
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People use Perl for many different things. Some of us write big, object-oriented, database-backed, complex, highly redundant mission-critical systems in Perl. Others use it as a slightly friendlier replacement for awk and bash. Both uses are perfectly valid, and you should be glad that the job description makes clear what they use Perl for. | [reply] |
Re: Perl Jobs on offer
by Joost (Canon) on Nov 29, 2008 at 11:59 UTC
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I the job's programming part is mostly shell scripting (and "Build Manager" does sound like it's that kind of job) then perl is quite a good choice. Just because you can do a lot more things better in perl than in bash doesn't mean perl isn't a good choice in this situation.
If you're into "serious programming", then it's probably not the job for you anyway.
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I wasn't looking for a job, I just struck me as very odd that they mention "perl" in the same category as "shell scripts".
CountZero A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James
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What I was trying to say is that "shell scripting" is a perfectly good category to put perl in, if the job entails mostly scripting. If the job is mostly coding-in-the-large, it's probably not so reasonable/insightful.
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Re: Perl Jobs on offer
by ikegami (Patriarch) on Nov 29, 2008 at 02:53 UTC
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I don't see the problem. While not all Perl programming is scripting, some could surely qualify.
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Re: Perl Jobs on offer
by Anonymous Monk on Nov 29, 2008 at 01:27 UTC
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Perl was invented as awk/sed/bash... replacement | [reply] |
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And computers were invented to calculate things [citation needed] but we do not group them with abacuses (well, when defining what a computer is we might but you know what I mean).
They have feelings too, ya know.
I'm so adjective, I verb nouns! chomp; # nom nom nom
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Many people use computers as a faster, better, more flexible way of doing the same jobs that their predecessors did with typewriters and slide rules. And, yes, we recognise that the computer as a whole is a different beast from these older, more specialised technologies... but we most certainly do group computer word processors with typewriters. We do group computerised calculators with slide rules. Many people use Perl as a faster, better, more flexible way of doing the same jobs that their predecessors did with shell scripts. Many people even call Perl one-liners from shell scripts, as a more robust and portable alternative to awk or sed. I've done it myself, where (for example) I needed to cope with null bytes, but I didn't have a mandate to rewrite the entire complicated script in Perl. Well, if that kind of thing is what the job involves, then how else would you expect them to describe it?
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Re: Perl Jobs on offer
by hda (Chaplain) on Nov 29, 2008 at 08:43 UTC
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Certainly, it would not be a lovely experience working for an IT company having such lack of respect for Perl, but I guess wise monks probably know how to tolerate those roaming in the dark. In this context, it is good to remember Larry Wall's speech "Programming is hard let's go scripting" http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2007/12/06/soto-11.html :
"Suppose you went back to Ada Lovelace and asked her the difference between a script and a program. She'd probably look at you funny, then say something like: Well, a script is what you give the actors, but a program is what you give the audience. That Ada was one sharp lady..."
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Re: Perl Jobs on offer
by talexb (Chancellor) on Dec 03, 2008 at 03:29 UTC
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As always, with these ads it may be putting too much stock into the accuracy of the ad to eliminate that employer out of hand. It's possible that the ad was written by a recruiter who thought they knew what the requirements were for the job -- or it could be that the job is 90% Perl and the other 10% is zsh / bash. Or they could be trying to screen out the developers who don't want to *any* shell scripting -- just Perl only.
I was hired at my current job as a Perl developer, but I have ended up using and creating shell scripts (preinst and postinst scripts for Debian's dpkg are the most recent examples) as part of my job. No biggie.
Alex / talexb / Toronto
"Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds
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Re: Perl Jobs on offer
by Zen (Deacon) on Dec 12, 2008 at 19:12 UTC
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Perl is used in scripting context quite often. Not every app will rise above a few lines of *nix automation. They've given the context of the job to you, not a thesis on Perl. | [reply] |
