> Alright, I don't want to quibble, but I would question any conclusions > you can draw from the numbers based upon the sole fact that it is > based upon how developer self-identify. > Every language has it's own sub-languages or frameworks that they identify themselves as. So I suspect the statistics Lupe posted are OK on average and reflecting the general reality and representation of job availability.
Adding onto what Lupe has posted, I can confirm my own quick search on www.monster.com (nationwide). Keywords: Perl, PHP, Java, Ruby yield the following as of 5 minutes ago. Perl (1795), PHP (1145), Java (4940), and Ruby (318) If you wish to add Drupal or other keywords, you may want to consider doing so rather than leaving open speculation. If PHP is a skill needed for the job, I suspect it will appear *somewhere* in the job description. If you search Drupal on monster.com for example you will see a lot of PHP overlap. Addressing some other themes I've seen here (not a direct response to you) - Perl has been around a long time without much change I am not sure why anyone thinks that is a bad thing. The fact that it is a stable language seems 'good' to me. It hasn't changed because it does it's job really well for what it does. - That the amount of tools that exist for Perl are 'confusing' I am not sure that is the case. The # of tools that exist does offer choice and it can be a bit difficult to weed through the bad stuff to get to the more useful tools, but that's what a mailing list like this can help with. Someone can easily post saying "I need something to do X Y and Z and I am interested in the underlying power of mod-perl or perl, can you guys help me" and there's always posts where people do help guide. Still though, it's not like it's really that hard. People here on the mailing list like Perrin have written up talks comparing different toolkits which can inform the community as well. And even without those resources, if you are used to working with open source tools you can usually visit and website and within 5 minutes figure out if it's active and booming community or a dead horse. So I see little problem really. In fact, the choice is a great thing. As Perrin I think said earlier (I'm paraphrasing liberally I suspect), if a company has already made up their mind ahead of time to use or not use a technology, it's pretty easy to bash whatever you want. That's why I liked Lupe's statistics on German job market, and I can back up the ratios of jobs with the USA www.monster.com website which makes me comfortable that his #s are probably reasonable representation of job market reality without FUD getting in the way. Best regards, Gunther
