Self-awareness disclaimer: These are just my thoughts, I claim no authority. I have not participated in any of the purported fierce interpersonal battles that have occurred.

But I'm not an indifferent bystander. I am a long-time Perl programmer, which simply means that I have been programming in Perl =>> 5 <<= for a long time. ^_^

I do think that there should be a "next-gen" Perl. I do think that it should have a clear designator. (This is largely a sociological argument; programming is a social phenomenon.) Be meaningful as a reference to an important and elegant set of new features, attract new people, keep being awesome.

I understand that there is a tension between the core maintainers (who want to elide unnecessary effort) and people who want Perl "next gen" to have a new label (historical marker, presence identifier). Both sides have a good point. Can we not simply do both ?

Can Perl can't be absolute Perl with a market label that matches "[A-Z0-9]" ?This doesn't need to clutter the code. Let the core maintainers make theirs jobs easier. Let 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 be possible market-facing labels. I understand the allusion to "42" and I am a D. Adams fan, but I see more advantage in my set:

7: puts the "6" into the past, is a coherent progression, and is a cool prime number 8: puts both "6" _and_ "7" into the past, and can be tilted to represent Infinity 9: a numerical stretch for the label, but goes to Infinity + 1 \^_^ 10: the power of base 10 and other such marketing possibilities 

If I am completely wrong in my musings, please feel free to eli5 -- since this is reddit. ^_^ I confirm that I have indeed been at least 5.

submitted by /u/singe
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Hello!

Anonymonk here, due to personal info. I've been primarily a Perl programmer since (approximately) the dawn of Perl 5 (with a B.Sc.), with some systems and embedded programming along the way. Over 20 years in software dev, then I was forced to take a 10 year break due to illness. I'm doing a little better, but I'm having trouble staging a comeback tour. I could use a little advice.

For starters, it's been long enough that almost all of my previous contacts have moved on, and the ones that haven't, well they'd want me to jump back in to management, which is not something I'm really ready for, nor do I want to go there anyway. Apart from that, the gap in my resume is something I've felt it's best to be honest about; though it is still a huge gap which raises reasonable concerns about whether my skills are still reasonably current and sharp. I've done a decent job of keeping up with new tech in the meantime, but I don't have a job I can point to and say, "look, I did that there". I have a few new modules on CPAN, but nothing that's usually super relevant.

I just want a nice, interesting development job, mostly using Perl, at or around the current market rate. Or a few fairly consistent part-time contracting gigs.

Freelancing sites like Upwork do not seem to even come close to a reasonable fee for service, at least based on the North American market. The very rare job there that *might* cover my power bill tends to be rare enough to not be worth the time to find, especially when 100 other people bid on it and lowball the amount anyway.

What do typical senior contracting/consulting rates look like for Perl devs these days? And for full time salaried, am I out to lunch with my expected range (depending on the job responsibilities and location) of about US$80-100k/year to start, based on NA market?

And most importantly, where do you all look for work now? LinkedIn seems OK-ish. jobs.perl.org gets a trickle of what it used to, but the quality of the posts there is still good, at least. The good news is I am not in a gigantic rush to find work (especially full time), but in a perfect world I'd get a base of relatively steady contract work so I can build myself up to full time over the next 6-12 months or so. Ideas?

submitted by /u/ansi_escape
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