I started using Perl in 2010. After years of a passionate use, I start to plan something else. Disclaimer: this is not because of "the language".
Note: at the end of August, after the publication of this post, some very helpful lovely persons came to me and the situation changed quite a bit. More on this later...
It is a real career issue
In my country of living, getting a Perl job is a real problem. I worked the last four years in a small team where all the projects were done using Perl and Mojolicious. As far as I know, even if I got fired for economic reasons linked to pandemic situation, all the applications I deployed there are still working well despite they are not maintained anymore (ouch).
Then, what I saw since March on the jobs market is: there is a niche of companies or organizations that still do an active use of Perl. What I notice is that they are all thinking of switching to other platform (maybe they are right, after all this is something that seem to go on since 15 years), and that there is no way new projects are developed with Perl. What I felt by talking with a CTO is that she hadn't any more trust with Perl: she was not able to recruit people. Therefore, they are hiding the Perl aspect in the jobs offers and then have even more difficulties finding people. Then, when they find some persons, they would even decide that, maybe, they should hire someone more versatile. And that person will be sad, maintaining some Perl, can you imagine this hell?
I mean, this is a kind of very sad waste.
say 'help';
I missed two opportunities based on the fact that I was not a polyglot enough. I know Java, JavaScript, Perl, quite enough of various web technologies like HTML and CSS, but still, I don't know something like Go, Python, you know this stuff is real trendy! I don't value the idea of polyglotism a lot, because I prefer to focus on something, and also, I am not really able to learn a lot of programming languages. I know this is not a very popular opinion, and now I feel like in trouble. So I'll try to improve myself.
It would still be possible to switch to Raku. This is a fantastic language, and I would really like to involve myself into it, but seriously, I need to pay my bills. I mean, the probability to find a Raku job in my country is... Small?
Lack of gender equality and diversity in the communities
The Perl communities are dominated by mostly men. There are rare persons who advocate for diversity and inclusivity, but honestly, if it exists at some conferences, it is not what is spread by the communities: just check the stats of Perl Weekly contributors or other popular Perl cultural items, this is the same-old men-leaded-content everywhere with very little exceptions.
If I decide to go away from this community, I will at least contribute to reduce the gender gap. Plus, it will be one grumpy person less.
Recent communities issues are awfully worrying
Perl has a number of toxic community members, this is not new. They are armful to other, and I got very shocked of some events that happened recently. I'll focus here exclusively on the victims.
Sawyer X, pumpkin of Perl since 2016 resigned of their responsibilities after being victim of harassment. It is unacceptable that a person enduring such responsibilities are bullied by communities members.
Wendy totally vanished of the Perl communities after years of active quality work for the advocacy of Perl. I am totally sure I would have never been interested in Perl that much without Wendy. She encouraged me, her talks and the way she was engaged marked me forever. She gave me a Learning Perl book copy, and sent me to Curtis Ovid Poe to ask for a signature. Meeting her was a major event in my Perl career, and I made a very good use of this gift. From what I understood, it was partly the Raku renaming that took her away, but I suppose it is more the talks and difficult interactions that happened at this time. I don't know where you are now, Wendy, and how you are doing, but I wanted to thank you.
The Mojolicious community recently denounced a racist issue in a CPAN distribution to TPF, and after it didn't get answered accurately, pointed a conflict of interest inside TPF itself. Result: nothing.
All those, and the lack of reactions from the communities members, continuing to do their release and challenges and blog posts as if everything was going fine, all of this made me sick. And you know what? I don't even want to participate in this a lot, even if I will always love the language in itself and have a good memory of my time around Perl, and it's communities. I guess I have been marked by a very small amount of personalities, that inspired me a lot of love and motivation, but what I am seeing right now, this is not where I want to be.
Modern Perl, Perl7, Corinna
All this is very exciting, seriously, I mean it. When the Perl7 announcement came, I felt really, something will be going to happen. Then I saw all the discourse and the doubt it created, and I got afraid.
In 2021, I feel like that there are a lot of codebases that still didn't incorporate the Modern Perl ideas. It's rare to see usages of subroutines signatures, even if the feature is (experimentally) around since 2015.
Corinna, and its possible implementation, Object::Pad looks to progress real well, and I am almost sure it will be usable soon.
Conclusion
But still, I am not patient enough, and I need to get a job: unfortunately, it looks like managers and CTOs lost the confidence in Perl, and that Perl codebases should be only fixed: new code should be written in other languages. Again, this is only what I saw in France, maybe it is different in other countries, and this is not what I wish, since I have been a Perl enthusiast since 2010, and wrote new web applications 100% with Perl in the 4 last years. I wish I could find more context for this incomprehensible Perl love, but for the above reasons, I'll have to go search somewhere else. It must be a good decision, I guess...
import antigravity
Note: I received lots of support and advices after posting this. I am grateful to the people who helped me.
Top comments (12)
I feel your pain. I've been tooling up and getting certified in Python for a year, and have had contracts that were tangentially python. Last job search I was about to take a python contract and then suddenly a Perl job jumped out at me at the best salary I've ever had. So don't lose hope! Perl is still out there and recruitment is still happening.
In my opinion, Perl has become a spanner. Everyone is expected to be able to bumble along in it while being expert in something else whether it's kubernetes, Docker, Ansible, AWS or something else that helps a company get their job done. I've done ruby in a Perl shop as a proof of concept.
Don't lose hope!
Pretty much exactly the same scenario that has been keeping me at a polite distance from the Perl family of languages lately.
The opportunities are few and far between. When they do show up you have to evaluate whether you want to be part of the Perl community as it is today. Ancient grudges have hardened into battle lines.
Then there's the tech itself. Cor is an admirable effort, and Object::Pad is an amazing test case. But even if somehow everybody got over themselves and brought it in today, would I see it in production before I retire? I'm getting old, so that's a serious question. Heck, it's still a guess whether I'll see
use strictin a 2021 production codebase. The only Raku code I've seen at work is my own utility scripts, and none of those survive when I move on ^_^Anyways, best of luck to you. If you do want the Perl jobs, you're gonna have to stretch out for international remote work. The good news is that as lesser companies drop Perl, those that remain look promising if you've got the patience.
Good luck. I know Perl jobs are pretty scarce, and I wish you well.
I just went through the same thing. I've been using Perl since 1998 and was working the same Perl-based project since 2004, more or less. I was jettisoned early this year and spent about 6 months looking for Perl and/or DB work, while [re]training in Python and adding to my DB skills. And then a Perl position came along that I started last week. This project is probably 10 years old and plans to migrate to Python and swap the underlying DB in the next year or two. So, while my Python skills aren't great now, I'll be able to grow into them as we transition.
It looks like the dream plan! Good luck and enjoy.
don't see why you need to explain switching to other languages
I'd make it mandatory for Perl developers to get a job doing something else from time to time, we'll have a lot less complaining about "features" :)
I'm not writing Perl right now and I miss CPAN like crazy, all the fancy new languages lack good libraries like you would not believe, but I think being multilingual is worth it
You know, blues singer, they were telling their problems to others in their songs. It was a way to share issues, and to realize that those issues were actually common and to live better with difficult situations.
I don't pretend my ridiculous blog has something in common with the deepness of the blues songs. But it is maybe one of the way to express things.
Well, a blog post is a way to express oneself, beyond the strict confines of pragmatic need and the validation of an argument.
I do believe that your point about lacking decent libraries (hating the JS universe there, it feels as the new form of a recurrent human nightmare) is quite sound, although CPAN nowadays feels more and more like an elephant graveyard; not to mention that the libraries for many implementations of protocols and the likes are often quite far from comprehensive and bulletproof.
This is one of those posts that make me wonder whether it was good that my interest for Perl never became tangled with my career to the point of defining it, being a sysadmin/devop/SRE/whatever. I'been loving the language for more than 15 years, although judging from the people at Perl conferences I am still on the "younger" side of the attendees.
Attending the conferences (well, one per year actually) has been the contents of my "holidays" for several years and a place where I learnt and met several good friends, although I've grown more and more disillusioned with the steering of the language development and especially with the interactions of preminent (whatever that means) figures in the community (not all of them, mind you).
I still remember a talk in the FOSDEM Perl devroom in 2016 describing the community as mature: however, age aside, I am not that convinced that several loud members of it fit with that concept. Any volunteer-based community, especially in tech, can be extremely frustrating to deal with and be a part of, and Larry's waning presence as a respected glue-like figure has been an additional hit.
Sorry too not to have seen Liz and Wendy around as much recently, just as much as I am pained for the rift and conflict between the Perl and Raku communities, which I personally don't see as useful to either community as more than a few seem to think.
If the part of the community I've seen causing needless flames and hurt (not referring to those expressing their dissatisfaction with the current situation) with their behaviour can be described as mature, then I guess it's showing the mental disfunctions that so go along with very advanced "maturity" in actual people. Not to mention that a language that has gone through so much in this century and enjoys a not-so-stellar reputation to begin with needs anything but non-constructive drama at this juncture.
I really really wish that the language could be revitalized with more additional technical value, much like the Corinna project is striving to do (loving it and its stated principles, btw), but I've wondered countless time myself if my love for Perl would be better directed elsewhere, where it doesn't feel like watching a ship slowly sink while those aboard bicker endlessly. Climate change and watching the news grant me enough depressing thoughts as it is. It's more of an impression, a feeling, than an accurate depiction of reality, since the efforts of Curtis and Paul, among others, are concrete steps towards building something, however it does exist.
When it comes to your average tech person who loves Perl, because it just fits with their own mind well (much like myself), I remain doubtful of a growing career path there, except as a herder of legacy software much like one would find in the page of Cosmonaut Keep by Kevin MacLeod. Which, as unexciting as it may be, could also be a good way to make decent money. And my hopes for a Raku-rich future are also not that realistic at this point: frankly I don't see it pick up beyond the confines of hobby or volunteer OS projects, or of companies built by language enthusiasts.
As for your country, believe me when I tell you that here in Italy where I live there are likely to be even less opportunities than in France. Sadly, the Italian mongers groups (much like most of their counterparts elsewhere) are by now just fictional entities embellishing the pages of pm.org .
Be strong and prosper. And most importantly, keep learning :D .
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