Job-hunt laffs OTD

[prog]

We have existing system built on PERL (developed over time) by various developers, with their own unique style.

I'll just bet you do. My translation: We run a horrible writhing nightmare of spaghetti code with no common style standards. Really, it's just that they tout that as a feature that makes it noteworthy.

Comments

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

It's a fixer-upper!
I guess they feel they have to warn you but they don't want it to sound like a bad thing. Maybe if you were some sort of code anthropologist it would be a plus.

[novalis.livejournal.com]

Do you know anyone like this? That is, a code anthropologist type who enjoys deciphering software palimpsests? My company has a Zope and Wordpress (and other stuff) development position open...

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

There probably are such people out there somewhere, but no, I don't know any.

[chocorisu.livejournal.com]

OH BOY. Cause that's what Perl is for, right? Writing your own unique and undecipherable new way of doing everything because you're smarter than everyone else.

[ahkond.livejournal.com]

Plus, they think "Perl" is an acronym. WARNING WARNING WARNING

[prog.livejournal.com]

It's a paler shade of red flag than the bit I bolded, but yes.

(And may a thousand camels drool into the Cheerios of anyone who insists that "Perl" actually is an acronym because of any jokey thing Larry said years ago.)

[radtea.livejournal.com]

The problem is that "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language" was repeated ad etc for years and years without so much as a twinkle in anyone's eye. I'm sure I saw it in the early 90's, probably in things like the 0.79 Slackware install or whatever it was.

The ontology is acronyms is very, very strange. Possibly even quantum. The AARP recently declared that AARP no longer stands for anything (insert joke here about never having stood for anything, except more handouts to rich old people...) So why is it capitalized? XKCD I can sorta understand. It's supposed to be funny. But what about the international writer's organization PEN, which apparently rather parsimoniously once stood for "Poets, Playwrights, Essayists and Novelists" but now stands nothing, as the organization is open to anyone who writes anything.

Are deacronyms the new retronyms?

Backronym?

[taskboy3000.livejournal.com]

Perhaps PERL is a backronym (in a descriptive sort of way) like PING is? It's pretty horrid though...