perl for a real job

[Fandelem]

my friend just got offered a job for 40/hr at Nortel, yet he turned it down because he "hates writing in perl" and "loves writing in java" - is perl really that bad of a language to write 40-50 hours a week in? i'd like to hear a bunch of explanations why someone would prefer java over perl or even c++ (keep in mind this is working 40-50hrs a week, not just a few hours a week :)

i guess because most of your time is spent debugging ..and perl is "typically messy" ?

-fandelem, the curious :}

[lazy_cod3R]

my days all these summer holidays have been to code in perl, to read and learn more about perl for werk.I have been working 30-40 hrs a week not just coding though but also designing the site , the coding was mainly done for 2 significant things firstly to create an online shopping cart("which for the life of me is still not finished because the dam boss just keeps changing he's mind everytime he sees a new way to order") and a measuring tool to help people measure and choose shutters correctly(its a shutters company) on-line. I dont mind it because i actually like writing code in perl, it is probably because my perl is OK but not as good as it should be and i just want to learn more, so im treating it as a learning process which makes me money :D plus we dont learn perl at uni so this is just another way to learn another language i guess, for the amount your friend is (getting/offered) though i would code in ones and zero's :).

[Fandelem]

ah. wow, that's cool (about what you're doing at work) - i'd love to see the code on something like that. right now i'm just getting into cgi/perl web stuff and i'm really liking it a lot. but supposively you can code anything in perl?

[YaRness]

Originally posted by Fandelem:
but supposively you can code anything in perl?

can, probably. though not necessarily should.

[lazy_cod3R]

what im doing at work now is web cgi stuff as well, for the shopping cart i didn't use a database, i probably should have , but didnt because i was afraid that the server didnt have the DBI module, i didnt want to take the risk so basiclly there's alot of use with perls built in dbm which is really easy to use.

[ 20 February 2001: Message edited by: lazy_cod3R ]

[iDxMan]

Nah, its not that bad. Although I probably use perl only about 20h/wk.. Other time is for SQL and other app support.

Most of what I use perl for is data conversion, admin scripts, clean up, cron things, automated user input, etc.. I did some cgi stuff for a friend awhile back and that really did look nasty.. :D Only spent a few hours on it for a quick Fantasy football hack. Basically so the members could email their weekly picks in, see reports, etc..

You can do just about anything in perl, and even if its not well suited for the current project, it might be a good prototype to start with.

-r