Why Did I Choose Perl When Building Crowdtilt?
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Re: Why Did I Choose Perl When Building Crowdtilt?
#2How do you find hiring? A Blekko founder said they chose Perl partly because as one of the few hot startups to be using Perl, it would make them a top choice for great Perl hackers.
Re: Why Did I Choose Perl When Building Crowdtilt?
#3The one thing I've learned as a consultant working outside the startup world, in the boring world of everyday business is just how much of the computerized world still runs on perl. I've seen some fantastically made systems and some real stinkers.
In the HN echo chamber, it seems like everyone who's anyone has moved on to ruby, rails, python, django, etc. Look into the every-web. My god, it's full of perl.
Re: Why Did I Choose Perl When Building Crowdtilt?
#4I wonder if this will make hiring easier or harder in the valley?
Re: Why Did I Choose Perl When Building Crowdtilt?
#5The one thing I've learned as a consultant working outside the startup world, in the boring world of everyday business is just how much of the computerized world still runs on perl. I've seen some fantastically made systems and some real stinkers. In the HN echo chamber, it seems like everyone who's anyone has moved on to ruby, rails, python, django, etc. Look into the every-web. My god, it's full of perl.
I agree. It is a misconception that Perl is "dying". It powers a lot of the web. It had a bad rep a few years ago due to cryptic-looking codes that were written as a throw away code and somehow spread all over the web :).
I was one of the skeptical developers at some point, but then I got hooked :).
Modern Perl changes the old rep alltogether. I encourage people to write well architected, maintainable, extensible code and follow design patterns regardless of the language of choice.
Re: Why Did I Choose Perl When Building Crowdtilt?
#6I wonder if this will make hiring easier or harder in the valley?
It is a very good question and I had to think really hard about it in the early days. My take on it is that I appreciate good developers regardless of the language of choice and those are the stars that we want to have at Crowdtilt. Good developers will usually learn any "needed" tools in a matter of hours.
In fact, I think if anything Perl would speed up the time it'll take to train a dev and get him/her to have an impact on the product from day one due to how easy is it to learn.
Re: Why Did I Choose Perl When Building Crowdtilt?
#7I wonder if this will make hiring easier or harder in the valley?
It is a very good question and I had to think really hard about it in the early days. My take on it is that I appreciate good developers regardless of the language of choice and those are the stars that we want to have at Crowdtilt. Good developers will usually learn any "needed" tools in a matter of hours. In fact, I think if anything Perl would speed up the time it'll take to train a dev and get him/her to have an…
In fact, I think if anything Perl would speed up the time it'll take to train a dev and get him/her to have an impact on the product from day one due to how easy is it to learn.
Which will be negated by how hard real-world perl code is to read and maintain.
Re: Why Did I Choose Perl When Building Crowdtilt?
#8How do you find hiring? A Blekko founder said they chose Perl partly because as one of the few hot startups to be using Perl, it would make them a top choice for great Perl hackers.
I personally wouldn't work for a company ONLY because of the programming language. I have to be super passionate about their product as well and then the language choice comes after.
So far hiring hasn't been a problem for us. However, we don't focus on hiring Perl hackers, but outstanding hackers instead. They grow to enjoy Perl after a few hours and sometimes during the interview ;) haha
Re: Why Did I Choose Perl When Building Crowdtilt?
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a very good question and I had to think really hard about it in the early days. My take on it is that I appreciate good developers regardless of the language of choice and those are the stars that we want to have at Crowdtilt. Good developers will usually learn any "needed" tools in a matter of hours. In fact, I think if anything Perl would speed up the time it'll take to train a dev and get him/her to have an…
In fact, I think if anything Perl would speed up the time it'll take to train a dev and get him/her to have an impact on the product from day one due to how easy is it to learn. Which will be negated by how hard real-world perl code is to read and maintain.
Developers that write unmaintainable and unreadable code exist. This has nothing to do with the language. That's where "Good Developers" come in.
You don't even need to know how to write code to understand the code written at Crowdtilt or any other company that really uses Modern Perl and have good practices.
Re: Why Did I Choose Perl When Building Crowdtilt?
#10Our company is primarily a Perl shop as well. Hiring is one of the big challenges with a technology stack based on Perl. Especially hiring younger talent who are more interested in the latest trendy language.
When I first started here I asked the same question: "Why?" - and I got essentially the same answer as this article.
In the end, as long as the development team is comfortable with it, and it works, and there is still a community of supporters, I suppose it doesn't really matter what it is written in.
Hey - at least it isn't PHP!