[LA.pm] contrasting London and LA

Tue Aug 15 12:28:42 PDT 2006

Duong,

I can't agree with you more. One of my main concerns is that the industry as
a whole needs to have more of a "grow your own" philosophy. When the
industry was "down" a few years box, nobody hired juniors at all. It's not
that surprising that a 3-4 years later, there are no mid-level people now.

Basically, the funnel ran dry and it's time to fill up the funnel again.

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 Duong Vu
> Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2006 10:33 AM
> To: Eric Gradman
> Cc: losangeles-pm at pm.org
> Subject: Re: [LA.pm] contrasting London and LA
> 
> 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.
> 
> Duong
> 
> On 8/15/06, Eric Gradman <ehgrad at yahoo-inc.com> wrote:
> > 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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