[LA.pm] contrasting London and LA

[Eric Gradman]

When I was a Perl Monger at Oversee.net, I conducted a sobering  
interview.  We had a candidate come in the door with a strong command  
of Perl (a rare event to be sure).  During the interview it came out  
that he was learning Java.  I asked him why, and he explained that  
former colleagues at Idealab had complained that due to the extreme  
difficulty of finding competent Perl programmers, they were  
increasingly starting new development projects in Java.  My jaw  
dropped, and I spent the rest of the interview in shock.

Personally, I'm avoiding learning anything at all about Perl 6... I  
worry that if I fall in love with new language features that I can't  
use in a production environment for a decade, I'll have switch to a  
different language that scratches that itch.  And despite their  
faults, Python and Ruby have a lot of compelling features.

On Aug 14, 2006, at 12:59 PM, Todd Cranston-Cuebas wrote:

> While perl is very popular in LA, we should note that I'm hearing  
> that perl
> is being supplanted in a number of industries by languages like  
> Python. For
> example, python used more and more for movie industry "pipelining"
> applications where images are pipelined through image processors  
> until they
> are then consolidated again for the final production. I've heard  
> that this
> industry was mostly perl and now may be as much 50/50 perl/python.  
> The perl
> foundation has to take this type of a shift seriously. I think each  
> engineer
> thinks in terms of their own, individual needs (which is  
> understandable),
> but the perl foundation needs to see perl in the context of a changing
> industry. I know that they are and do take these points seriously. I
> recently met with two perl foundation members to discuss this very  
> point.
>
> I only mentioned ruby on rails in an earlier post since many people  
> "stick"
> with the language that scratched their earliest itches. This was  
> clearly the
> case for many PHP people. If perl is the language of choice only  
> for ad-hoc
> automation scripts or large-scale, complex solutions on the other  
> extreme,
> then you run the risk of having your potential "new blood" siphoned  
> off by
> other technologies that allow for the building of modest, but complete
> solutions with lower learning curves. All groups/organizations/ 
> entities need
> to think in terms of the overall "health" of the community (e.g.,
> maintaining a flow of new members, satisfying the needs of existing  
> members,
> etc.).
>
> Todd
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: losangeles-pm-bounces+tcc=ticketmaster.com at pm.org
>> [mailto:losangeles-pm-bounces+tcc=ticketmaster.com at pm.org] On
>> Behalf Of Eric Hammond
>> Sent: Monday, August 14, 2006 12:26 PM
>> To: James Pitts
>> Cc: losangeles-pm at pm.org
>> Subject: Re: [LA.pm] contrasting London and LA
>>
>> James Pitts wrote:
>>> Perl seems to be a strong thread throughout the Idealabs companies.
>>> For those of you who worked at Shopzilla, eToys, and Citysearch, do
>>> you know any of the history about how Bill Gross' companies became
>>> perl shops? Was there a perl advocate from Caltech or JPL on the
>>> Idealabs staff?
>>
>> I am pretty sure I can take credit for being the first Perl
>> advocate at the first Idealab company.  I was one of the
>> first technology folks hired at Citysearch and was writing
>> and pushing Perl there in July 1996.
>> I was previously coding Perl (and C, C++, etc) in Cincinnati
>> before Caskey (18 at the time) asked me to move to LA for Citysearch.
>>
>> Though the Citysearch development team was not able to switch
>> the front end to Perl until after I left, we did code large
>> chunks of the back end in Perl and ended up with quite a few
>> Perl lovers who spread out to other companies in the area.
>> In particular two groups of developers left Citysearch and
>> went to eToys (an Idealab company) and Rent.com (not an
>> Idealab company).
>>
>> I don't know how Perl became popular at other Idealab
>> companies and the rest of LA.  I'm sure it wasn't any one
>> person's influence unless you count Larry.
>>
>> --
>> Eric Hammond
>> ehammond at thinksome.com
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