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Message from discussion can lisp do what perl does easily?
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Barry Margolin  
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 More options Mar 28 2000, 3:00 am
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
From: Barry Margolin <bar...@bbnplanet.com>
Date: 2000/03/28
Subject: Re: can lisp do what perl does easily?
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In article <3163193555464...@naggum.no>, Erik Naggum  <e...@naggum.no> wrote:

>* ; ; ; h e l m e r . . . <assembl...@t-three.com>
>| I have been slowly learning lisp over the past year and have had someone
>| mention to me that I should learn perl, for jobs etc.

>  the unemployed programmer had a problem.  "I know", said the programmer,
>  "I'll just learn perl."  the unemployed programmer now had two problems.

>  having a job is not unimportant, but if knowing perl is a requirement for
>  a particular job, consider another one before taking that one.  this is
>  true even if you know perl very well.  life is too long to be an expert
>  at harmful things, including such evilness as C++ and perl.

While it's easy to say that when you're talking about a "particular job", I
don't think it's right to be so cavalier about this.  If you have a more
popular skill, it expands your choice of employers.  If you're interested
in the web industry and know Perl, you can get a job just about anywhere.
If you know Lisp, job opportunities are much more scarce.  It may be that
those jobs will be more interesting, since they're likely to be more
enlightened companies, but finding them may be difficult.

And if you have multiple skills (e.g. you know both Lisp *and* Perl) then
you have even more choice *and* your range of skills will make you more
attractive to all potential employers.  Basically, I think programmers
should try to be familiar with all the popular languages.  It's fine to
have a preference, but adaptability is an important strength.  Being a
language or OS snob is not going to improve your life.

--
Barry Margolin, bar...@bbnplanet.com
GTE Internetworking, Powered by BBN, Burlington, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
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