[LA.pm] contrasting London and LA

[Eric Gradman]

At Oversee we did just that.  Just to be clear, I am no longer an  
employee of Oversee, but I have great things to say about them.  We  
hired good developers with good computer science skills (in whatever  
language), and sat them down with a Perl book.  I conducted multiple  
"Perl Boot Camps."  New developers' first couple weeks with the  
company were spent learning basic Perl, templating (TT), MVC design  
patterns, and database interaction.

What I noticed is that even a few months developing commercial  
software (in any language) made a new hire immeasurably more apt to  
pick up the Perl in our dev environment.  That is to say, I think the  
major stumbling block isn't so much the language but the patterns of  
development: MVC, etc. but also patterns for handling high traffic  
volumes, and even "how do I write code that talks to an SQL server?"   
That should come as no surprise, but I have a feeling that those  
sorts of patterns are easier to pick up in languages other than Perl.

TMTOWTDI (did I get that right?) can free experienced developers from  
the constraints that other languages impose.  Coming to Perl from C  
many years ago was an experience of "wow, I can write efficient code  
concisely in a fraction of the time with Perl"  But I would not want  
universities to necessarily churn out new developers who know Perl.   
There's More Than One Way To Do It, and 95% of them are crap.   
Identifying that 5% is easier if you've written production code in a  
more structured language.

On Aug 15, 2006, at 10:45 AM, Nicholas Clark wrote:

> I read this:
>
>> On 8/15/06, Eric Gradman <ehgrad at yahoo-inc.com> wrote:
>
>>> 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.
>
> And was about to write this very reply:
>
> On Tue, Aug 15, 2006 at 10:32:53AM -0700, Duong Vu wrote:
>> One of the things I've observe in our industry, and not just the Perl
>> market, is that everyone wants seasoned veterans. No one seems to be
>> willing to hire junior anything in IT anymore.
>>
>> In order for there more competent Perl developers with experience,
>> Perl companies need to be willing to hire and train young undeveloped
>> talents. Young kids out of college will commit themselves to what  
>> ever
>> pays the bills more often than what suites their personal  
>> interests or
>> likes. And very often, these kids won't know what they like yet.
>> Java/.Net with its many more  jobs will be much more attractive to
>> them.
>>
>> In order for there to be more Perl shops, there need to be more Perl
>> developers. And if we want more Perl developers, we need to recruit,
>> train, and give them enough experiences so they are desirable.
>
> (So now I'm guilty of the Usenet sin not trimming any of it)
>
> The only thing I can add is that nowhere I've worked has had any  
> sort of
> process of mentoring junior perl programmers into competent, senior  
> perl
> programmers. Every firm seems to expect to hire senior people  
> straight out,
> which isn't sustainable, as it gives no consideration to who is  
> going to
> train the next iteration.
>
> This sort of naive policy *does* work with C, C++ or Java  
> programmers (for
> example, and for accountants, for that matter), because there are  
> degree
> courses churning them out, and there are large consulting firms  
> that recruit
> smart young things straight out of university and indoctrinate them  
> into
> their way of doing things. Although based on a straw poll of one at a
> previous job, whilst the C++ programmer we hired ex-Logica was  
> competent, he
> didn't have anywhere near the breadth of knowledge that the self  
> taught open
> source hacking C++ programmer knew. So I'm not convinced that these  
> mass
> production factories are the answer either.
>
> So, next question, how many recruiters/hiring managers on this list  
> are
> looking to recruit smart juniors and mentor them up?
>
> Nicholas Clark
>
>