can a job in perl help me in my future java goals

[Sammy Bill]

Hello,

I m a recent college graduate and I got an offer for a perl developer (web) for a 6 month contract.

Can this experience help me if I want to do java development afterward?

Thanks

[Deepak Bala]

It will add to the flavor of your resume. But is your question "Will programming in perl help me program better in java ?"

[Joe Harry]

It might add to your programming skills but you will need to spend some extra effort in learning JEE technologies.

[Jimmy Clark]

What are the future Java goals?

If you enjoy programming computing software, then the "brand" of a programming language or the "syntax" of a particular programming language should not be so important.

If you only enjoy writing "Java" codez, then you might be very unhappy in a Perl-based position.

At this point, a recent college graduate might not be able to determine what is actually is needed for attaining career goals.

Aside, both Perl and Java are names, so in written English the first letter of a name is always capitalized. And, questions always end with a '?'. So, learning correct spelling and punctuation should be a priority for individuals with poor writing skills.

[Henry Wong]

Generally, a college grad don't really know what he/she really prefers anyway. So, for a 6-month contract, I say "why not?'.

Why not learn (and use deeply) a language that can help you in your career? Even if you wind up hating Perl, learning it professional will give you a skill that you will need. I can't count how many times that I needed a quick and dirty script to help me in my job (like do a global conversion of Javascript files), and doing in Perl was much quicker than anything else.

Henry

[arulk pillai]

In my view, first job is always the hardest to get. Find out if this particular organization does have a Java shop as well. If yes, then you might be able to work on Perl for a while and later on find some Java roles by proving your competency and through internal contacts.

If this particular company does not have a Java shop, how confident are you to find another job? Are you prepared to wait? What about an income?

Are you prepared to keep at Java through self-taught projects and open-source contributions while working on Perl?

[Jimmy Clark]

Comments above are very good...take heed.

The Perl (Practical Extraction and Reporting Language) is a very powerful language and best suited for heavy text manipulation/conversion/transformation. This is especially useful when dealing with SGML or XML data or any of the popular EDI formats, e.g. EDIFACT. In these cases, Perl is the better tool than Java and having this skillset is a good thing. If you can only think in "Java" then you are playing with a severe handicap

Good luck!

[Tim Holloway]

James Clarks wrote:Comments above are very good...take heed.

The Perl (Practical Extraction and Reporting Language) is a very powerful language and best suited for heavy text manipulation/conversion/transformation. This is especially useful when dealing with SGML or XML data or any of the popular EDI formats, e.g. EDIFACT. In these cases, Perl is the better tool than Java and having this skillset is a good thing. If you can only think in "Java" then you are playing with a severe handicap

Good luck!

I think I'll have to take exception to the idea that Perl is a great language for XML/SGML. The regex parsers alone can't do much with that particulan format, so you end up having to bring in external parsing code, and in many cases that means that CPAN and I get into merry-go-rounds. It's IMHO far easier to parse XML with Java or Python.

However, Perl does do sterling work on things like EDI format. And one of it's original intents was to be able to decompose "printed" reports (in text file format) back into raw data. Which is the "Extraction" part of perl.

The Reporting part has made PERL one of the original Unix report writer apps, since it allows one to "paint" the report in a WYSIWYG-like form. It's also quite useful when preparing web pages. Perl was one of the orignal CGI languages, and even today is occasionally used for that purpose.

[Jimmy Clark]

Good points. I wasn't thinking too much in terms of "parsing" XML, but rather creating XML-based documents from things like plain ASCII files or EDI formatted files when you need to identify patterns via regular expressions.