Re: PERL , DHTML and the myth of cross-platform work

<.quoted>
>>>>
All of this is a long way around to telling you that Perl is a poor choice
if your primary goal is to become marketable. Companies with Unix
installations don't need Perl folks because they already have those skills
with their system admins. Companies in an NT environment aren't likely to be
using Perl in the first place, but if they do, they aren't going to be doing
complex things that require a full-time person to manage.

Perl is a fine language, but by itself, it's not likely to get you a job.
<<<<
</.quoted>

Please do not tell this to my clients, who are paying me quite frequently to
program applications in Perl 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.  I'm not a
SysAdmin, but simply a CGI gun for hire, writing shopping carts, form
handlers, database interfaces, web page editors and similar fun stuff.  Our
business site is HTML 4.01 Transitional dynamically generated by a Perl
script.  The environment is Apache on Linux with Perl 5.005 and MySQL 1.23.

That being said, I'd also like to add that (pulling from the original note)
PHP is quite comfortable in many different environments, and many have
indicated it was an easier language to learn than Perl.  You may find it
more comfortable if you catch onto the embedded concept more easily than
that of independantly located scripts.

I should also add that I don't work in NT environments at all.  I'm just too
busy to spend the time needed to learn to adapt my Perl scripts to NT.  I
suppose someday, when things calm down a bit, I'll learn it just for grins.

I would have the guess, however, that the above evaluation of Perl being
less valuable in that environment might be correct.  If you wish to work
with NT, you might want to look into ASP.  If you would rather explore the
*nix world...especially under Apache...then either Perl or PHP make
excellent choices for CGI programming.

D

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