9 ms·

Speaking as a London-based freelancer specialising in Perl, I can tell you that the number of companies developing new systems in Perl is tiny (like, maybe, hal

by davorg 4y ago

Speaking as a London-based freelancer specialising in Perl, I can tell you that the number of companies developing new systems in Perl is tiny (like, maybe, half a dozen). Until four or five years ago, there was still plenty of maintenance work to be had, but even that has pretty much dried up now.

gjvc 4y ago
what are you going to do then?
- davorg 4y ago
  I'm semi-retired. I have a part-time contract maintaining a system I worked on a few years ago and I pick up other bits of freelance work from time to time. And I've been prototyping a few project ideas (in Perl) to see if any of them could be a sustainable source of passive income. Of course, if any of them grow to the extent that they need a development team, I'll need to rewrite them in a more sustainable language.
- 323 4y ago
  Maybe he'll wait for the Y2038 crisis :p
  - davorg 4y ago
    Hey, it worked for the COBOL crowd 25 years ago :-)
cutler 4y ago
I think Ruby is heading in the same direction.
- reducesuffering 4y ago
  Yes, the trend of usage metrics don't look promising. It's basically only used for Rails and the heyday was 2010-2016. People are much more likely to reach for Django/Python or Javascript backends, especially with the ubiquity of React. Ruby jobs are going to generally be maintenance of older projects.
  - cutler 4y ago
    See also http://www.modulecounts.com http://www.modulecounts.com .
- weatherlite 4y ago
  Will take awhile for Ruby to reach that state (if at all), 15 years at least I'd say. The reality is many companies are built on Ruby and rewrites are hard. Stripe, Shopify, Github, Gitlab and the list goes on. Perl never had this kind of traction afaik - yes many scripts were written on Perl but not many .com companies were based on it. But I'm not arguing Ruby is well past it's peak - that is (sad, to me) fact because I happen to think it's a gorgeous language but it is what it is. I guess I'll have to get used to Python/Node or maybe switch to low level which is an old and perhaps unrealistic old dream of mine.
  - davorg 4y ago
    > Perl never had this kind of traction afaik - yes many scripts were written on Perl but not many .com companies were based on it. Were you around for the first (pre-2000) dotcom boom? From where I was sitting (freelancing in London) it sometimes seemed that all of the first wave of dotcom companies were writing their apps in Perl. In fact, I've often thought that a lot of Perl's current bad reputation stems from this generation's CTOs and dev managers being people who suffered writing those Perl web apps at a time when no-one knew how any of this stuff was supposed to work and careful design went out the window in the rush to get things to market before the bubble burst.
    - weatherlite 4y ago
      I am only aware of Booking.com that is to this day mostly Perl. Do u know of any specific names?
      - mirchibajji 4y ago
        Zoopla. It's been a couple of years I left, but I believe they still use Perl for the core business logic. There are wrappers/docker images built on top of them, but Perl is doing all the heavy lifting AFAIK. IME, big older companies have Perl code chugging along, but not very visible. Part of this is also because there's the perception that it is hard to attract developers if the company mentions Perl any where in the job description.
      - 4y ago
- unixhero 4y ago
  Ruby is so great. I don't understand why this is occurring.
  - cutler 4y ago
    Agreed. It's VHS trumping Betamax all over again. Few things irk me more than Pythonistas crowing over their world dominance but if you look at the top 3 languages - Python, JS & Java - it's clear that language design counts for nothing.
    - chipotle_coyote 4y ago
      I think it's largely because of Ruby's deep association with Rails. This is nothing against Rails, per se, but so many people only think of Ruby in association with it that they just never reach for it in other contexts. Personally, I think Ruby is a great utility scripting language, really good for the sort of small projects that many people would probably have used Perl for two decades ago. (Having said that, I suspect that the Ruby community's love of "first, install a Ruby version manager" does it no favors when it comes to adoption for these sorts of small projects, although the same is arguably true of Python.)
- cutler 4y ago
  I'll qualify that by some observations re the Ruby job situation in London which seems quite steady. Rails jobs in London in Indeed, for example have hovered around the 250 mark for many years now whilst Ruby jobs advertised are still higher than Golang. I just received an email from a recruiter listing 21 Ruby roles so it's not quite Perl yet. I also notice a high percentage of "Who Is Hiring" roles here on HN feature Ruby/Rails so maybe Ruby's fate will be as a middle-tier language with adoption just below the big guns - Python, JS, Java, C# and PHP.

by davorg 4y ago

gjvc 4y ago

what are you going to do then?

davorg 4y ago
I'm semi-retired. I have a part-time contract maintaining a system I worked on a few years ago and I pick up other bits of freelance work from time to time. And I've been prototyping a few project ideas (in Perl) to see if any of them could be a sustainable source of passive income. Of course, if any of them grow to the extent that they need a development team, I'll need to rewrite them in a more sustainable language.
323 4y ago
Maybe he'll wait for the Y2038 crisis :p
- davorg 4y ago
  Hey, it worked for the COBOL crowd 25 years ago :-)

cutler 4y ago

I think Ruby is heading in the same direction.

reducesuffering 4y ago
Yes, the trend of usage metrics don't look promising. It's basically only used for Rails and the heyday was 2010-2016. People are much more likely to reach for Django/Python or Javascript backends, especially with the ubiquity of React. Ruby jobs are going to generally be maintenance of older projects.
- cutler 4y ago
  See also http://www.modulecounts.com http://www.modulecounts.com .
weatherlite 4y ago
Will take awhile for Ruby to reach that state (if at all), 15 years at least I'd say. The reality is many companies are built on Ruby and rewrites are hard. Stripe, Shopify, Github, Gitlab and the list goes on. Perl never had this kind of traction afaik - yes many scripts were written on Perl but not many .com companies were based on it. But I'm not arguing Ruby is well past it's peak - that is (sad, to me) fact because I happen to think it's a gorgeous language but it is what it is. I guess I'll have to get used to Python/Node or maybe switch to low level which is an old and perhaps unrealistic old dream of mine.
- davorg 4y ago
  > Perl never had this kind of traction afaik - yes many scripts were written on Perl but not many .com companies were based on it. Were you around for the first (pre-2000) dotcom boom? From where I was sitting (freelancing in London) it sometimes seemed that all of the first wave of dotcom companies were writing their apps in Perl. In fact, I've often thought that a lot of Perl's current bad reputation stems from this generation's CTOs and dev managers being people who suffered writing those Perl web apps at a time when no-one knew how any of this stuff was supposed to work and careful design went out the window in the rush to get things to market before the bubble burst.
  - weatherlite 4y ago
    I am only aware of Booking.com that is to this day mostly Perl. Do u know of any specific names?
    - mirchibajji 4y ago
      Zoopla. It's been a couple of years I left, but I believe they still use Perl for the core business logic. There are wrappers/docker images built on top of them, but Perl is doing all the heavy lifting AFAIK. IME, big older companies have Perl code chugging along, but not very visible. Part of this is also because there's the perception that it is hard to attract developers if the company mentions Perl any where in the job description.
    - 4y ago
unixhero 4y ago
Ruby is so great. I don't understand why this is occurring.
- cutler 4y ago
  Agreed. It's VHS trumping Betamax all over again. Few things irk me more than Pythonistas crowing over their world dominance but if you look at the top 3 languages - Python, JS & Java - it's clear that language design counts for nothing.
  - chipotle_coyote 4y ago
    I think it's largely because of Ruby's deep association with Rails. This is nothing against Rails, per se, but so many people only think of Ruby in association with it that they just never reach for it in other contexts. Personally, I think Ruby is a great utility scripting language, really good for the sort of small projects that many people would probably have used Perl for two decades ago. (Having said that, I suspect that the Ruby community's love of "first, install a Ruby version manager" does it no favors when it comes to adoption for these sorts of small projects, although the same is arguably true of Python.)
cutler 4y ago
I'll qualify that by some observations re the Ruby job situation in London which seems quite steady. Rails jobs in London in Indeed, for example have hovered around the 250 mark for many years now whilst Ruby jobs advertised are still higher than Golang. I just received an email from a recruiter listing 21 Ruby roles so it's not quite Perl yet. I also notice a high percentage of "Who Is Hiring" roles here on HN feature Ruby/Rails so maybe Ruby's fate will be as a middle-tier language with adoption just below the big guns - Python, JS, Java, C# and PHP.