This article is like a watery, inoffensive version of Graeber for the author and his MBA classmates in the managerial class.

Yeah, not everything needs to be coded like you're showing it off on github. Not that you can't do some nifty stuff, elegantly, in Perl.

Should you write your entire codebase in Perl, in 2018? hell no

But you probably shouldn't be writing anything more than 10-20 lines in Bash, either, and this class of organically evolving script, with little attention to design at the start (much like the language itself) is where Perl really shines.

I always regret writing bash scripts, which start really simple, but tr require refactoring into perl after a few days.

Only problem with perl I've run into is analysing text at speed - 60,000 lines a second of regex doesn't work on a raspberry pi or other low end processor.

Just use awk.

s/guts to rewrite them/staff experienced in both languages, with access to the original requirements, and knowledge of said system, in addition to full support from management to swap out working code with fresh, potentially buggy replacements, instead of devoting time to other projects which may actually be profitable/g

A Perl reference, I think :) http://wiki.c2.com/?LazinessImpatienceHubris

As a sysadmin who started out replacing power supplies as a datacenter tech, and nowadays wrangles AWS auto-scaling groups, the idea of _not_ automating away the tedious parts of my job is pretty hilarious. I had one operations/support job where this was the case, and thankfully, I quit after one month.

If anyone out there has the gumption to cobble together a dev environment and automate away their BS job, yet can't get recognition from your employer; it is time to seek out a new job, you've certainly got the skills for something better!

At least only 2.8 percent of the companies he contacted were interested in hiring someone whose only genuine reason to be interested in software development is the salary. Now I remember why I've gravitated towards sysadmin rather than dev, and avoid the big tech companies and their cult of overpaid mediocrity.

Companies only care about your passion for your craft insofar as it affects your willingness to work overtime for less than you're worth.

(That's a slight exaggeration to make a cynical point, but not far from the truth.)

How did you infer from his post that his only genuine reason for becoming a developer was due to salary?

It is just an inference, for sure, but I reread the post, less angry, and imagining the author was a student I respected; It still comes off a bit crass, especially these two quotes:

"A less-talked about part of the bootcamper’s journey is what happens after you graduate — when you’re searching for that six-figure developer position."

"As I got more experience, I effectively “leveled up.” I became capable of completing interviews at companies with higher hiring bars. This is illustrated below as a linear correlation between the number of weeks I was into the process and the base salary I was offered."

At the same time, if I imagine the author as a (highly organized) co-worker, seeking a better salary, I have a bit more respect for the legwork he has put in (although it is highly unlikely anyone with a full time gig would have the time for it).

It remains unclear whether salary was the author's only reason to become a developer; there is only the absence of counterevidence. I would definitely feel uncomfortable hiring or working with a junior employee who attempts to "mask (their) inexperience", even during the hiring process.