“Nobody use it. It’s a dead language. It’s a technology of the past…” Are the kind of statement you’ll be likely to hear about Perl nowadays.
Nonetheless, I’ve landed one of the most exciting mission I’ve ever had because of Perl. I’ve met great people, because of Perl. I’ve solved issues in no time, because of Perl.
So, there’s no chance I’ll drop Perl any time soon.
That’s more or less what I’ve been asked in a recent (failed) interview. That was more subtle of course, but after being corrected on Scrum terminology, failing to recognize the prevalence of the retrospective over the other rituals probably sealed the outcome of the interview.
I clearly didn’t convinced my interviewer. My last Scrum experience was ten years ago. And would probably be considered as “Faux Agile” in actual terminology. So he was probably allowed to assert that I wouldn’t be a good Scrum Master. But does that mean that I was not Agile?
From time to time, I review my tools/processes to keep what’s useful, ditch what is no longer necessary or even convenient, and improve what can be improved. As a developer, I spend a lot of time using the Vim text editor, so in this article I’ll spend some time rewriting my .vimrc.
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” ― Abraham Lincoln
This time I feel really qualified to write this article because believe me, I love Perl ! I think in Perl, I dream in Perl, and I really appreciate the whole Perl community. I’ve been in love with this language for more than a decade but I decided that I needed a change.
I’ve already said in a previous article why I chose to learn JavaScript this year (instead of getting involved in Perl 6 for example) but let me tell you why you might also enjoy learning JavaScript if you love Perl. Perl developers form a very unified community that all too often, resist outside influences, but learning a second language like JavaScript can really be a very enlightening experience.