[Techtalk] Ruby/Perl Tutorials

[Bethany Seeger]

Thanks, everyone, for your thoughtful replies.

I personally don't have anything against perl -- and lots of respect for 
it.  Though I hear there's many ways to do the same thing (which is, of 
course, true of many scripting languages - but I do think perl has 
gotten quite a rep as being challenging to read if you're not the 
author. again, I guess any scripting language could be like that... this 
is where it gets confusing for me.   :)

 From someone who mostly does compiled work it's very confusing as to 
what's really being used out there, versus the flavor of the moment. And 
it makes sense that it varies from field to field.  I work in a 
scientific field -- weather radars -- so there's alot of IDL being used 
here by the PIs.

I guess I have the somewhat negative (and sheltered) view that C is 
dying.  I work in an area where it's somewhat hard for a C programmer to 
find a job.  Or disappearing  - as in new grads seem to hate it - I love 
programming in C and am afraid it's a dying art form, if you will.  I 
know that so many things are built on C - so it's not toast, but people 
around here seem to respect it less and less. 

So, with that background logic on a compiled language I do like, if I 
want to devote time to a general purpose, useful scripting language, I'd 
like to pick one that will be around for a while.  I'm inclined to go 
for perl, since I have always kinda wanted to learn it.

Also, thanks for the comments on the resume.  Very helpful to think 
about that stuff -- about not including things you don't know well, or 
maybe classifying what you know -- ie.  'familiar with' versus 'fluent 
in'.  I'm not specifically doing this to buff up my resume, but was just 
curious as to what people want.

-Bethany

Anne Wainwright wrote:
> Hello, Bethany,
>
> My ha'porth - from someone with minimal perl skills.
>
> On Wed, 14 Apr 2010 08:49:16 -0400
> Bethany Seeger <seeger at prosensing.com> wrote:
>
>
>   
>> perform some minor function.   What looks good on a resume?
>>     
>
> Well, maybe what you might come across more often in the sort of
> environment you intend to work in would be a more appropriate question.
>
> If you were working in a in an established 'nix environment you would
> surely meet miles of lines of perl scripts there. It is also ubiquitous
> on the web whatever other languages grab the limelight at present. Even
> if not the 'flavour of the moment' perl has serious power, and the CPAN
> repository of perl modules is matched by but nothing. Nobody said that
> it was the easiest, but then it surely isn't the most difficult. It is
> very versatile.
>
> No one ever got overlooked for having perl on their resume, and since
> you won't be able to soak up enough of a new language in a few weeks to
> fool an interviewer who might be skilled in that particular language,
> then plan for a longer term relationship with your chosen partner.
>
> All of the o'reilly perl books are good, and I note the following from
> a 2006 article which is still relevant (and which you might read).
>
> http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=526866
>
> --------------------------
> Recent Bookscan stats show Perl at roughly three times the number of
> sales as Python, ten times as Ruby, and half as many as PHP.
>
> O'Reilly Media is very much driven by numbers and they felt the Perl
> book market was strong enough that they published 4 new Perl titles
> last summer alone. That is a large number of books for a relatively
> small tech publisher to devote to a single language. 
> ---------------------------
>
> Somebody has to be reading all those books, and it isn't the local book
> club ladies either!
>
> bestest
> Anne
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