[Phoenix-pm] OO Perl for idiots?

Scott Walters scott at illogics.org
Sat Apr 8 12:36:42 PDT 2006


Hey Michael,

IT changes rapidly.  Anyone who cannot *continue* to assimilate new
skills and adapt to new ideas quickly finds themselves irrelavent.
They might be able to peddle antique wares at this job, but when
the time comes to find another one (for whatever reason), they're 
going to find themselves in interview after interview where the
primary focus is OO design, and they're going to find themselves
not only changing their tune in a hurry to stay off the bread line,
but trying and failing to make up for lost time.  And I'm not just
saying this to be mean.  I've been through a lot of interview
processes in these past 5 or so years, and there's an unmistakable
theme:  employers are tired of having to throw away code and they
want programmers who are also "architects" and are able to design
code that's reusable, adaptable, and scalable.  There's no place
in this world for people who write code full of hardcodes, 
monolithic functions, non-data driven (no datastructures), doesn't
rapidly assimilate usage scenarios, etc.  No body wants that. 
The fact that they made it in to a job before their present
employer figured that out doesn't make this any less true.  So,
wish them luck for me.  

-scott

On  0, Michael Friedman <friedman at highwire.stanford.edu> wrote:
> Today I was told that a couple of my co-workers said they "couldn't  
> understand object oriented Perl." Emphasis on the *couldn't*. Bah.  
> They aren't even trying. They learned Perl 3 many years ago and never  
> bothered to update their coding styles.
> 
> Anyone have a cluebat I can borrow? I've already thrown the Panther  
> book and Perl Best Practices at them and been completely rebuffed.  
> I'm sure that they mainly don't want to even try, but I feel like I  
> have to at least make an attempt to teach.
> 
> (These are the same people who refuse to use DBI and keep going with  
> Sybase::DBlib. They also use modules so rarely that all their code is  
> monolithic and duplicated in every script. And of course no one else  
> can support it, because it's all hidden away outside of our CVS tree.)
> 
> Hrm, perhaps I should just give up.
> 
> Some days I really wish I had hiring & firing authority...
> 
> just ranting,
> -- Mike
> 
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Michael Friedman                     HighWire Press
> Phone: 650-725-1974                  Stanford University
> FAX:   270-721-8034                  <friedman at highwire.stanford.edu>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
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