Note: The following story is imaginary. Even if it matches occasional events in the real world, it is certainly twisted around enough not to be true.

It also barely scratches the surface of the level of lying, manipulation, financial malfeasance, and back stabbing that was involved.

Let's say there was a company that specialized in very complex text processing.

They had to deal with large amounts of varying data. They had to clean it, munge it, merge it, and load it up into a database.

So of course, the initial very customer specific code was in Perl, on Linux or Unix,and the back-end was Oracle.

So let's say the company grew, added clients, added projects, etc.

And for every client, it added a Perl programmer.

Sometimes a programmer would be split between a couple of clients, but the really big clients required a fulltime programmer for ongoing changes to their very complex project.

This was OK, the clients were happy to pay, and the company was very profitable.

Then let's say the company got sold, and new management was installed at the level above the director of this division. The guy in charge thought he was a tech,and that all these expensive Perl/Unix people should be working in a better, newer Windows tool driven environment. That way they could be so much more productive and he could have fewer programmers per client.

After all, .NET was the future, so people should move to either canned packages or write in C#. Of course, he had no C# programmers, but he heard they were cheaper than Perl programmers.

Of course, he had no clue about the true productivity he was currently getting, since he did not understand what these people were doing for a living. What he had was a Windows only contract programmer whispering in his ear, telling him things he wanted to hear. As long as the shop was Perl/Unix/Oracle centric, this Windows only contract programmer would never be alpha geek.

The current director who was running the very profitable division is then shuffled off to run MIS, and then promptly fired.

So a new director is placed. He was a project manager. He only knew Windows, VB, and SQL/Server.

So there is a reorg, and wouldn't you know it, one of those pesky primadonna Perl Unix guys gets layed off.

Who cares that the account he worked on was making VERY serious money for the company. After all, if that primadonna could handle it, why couldn't his brilliant contract programmer, along with a contract project manager, and the current junior level Perl programmer who was working on that account.

30 days later the junior makes a mistake after working an 80 hour week. A very expensive mistake. The company writes a serious check to the client, a check equaling multiple years of expensive programmer salary.

Note: This mistake was exactly the type the pesky primadonna programmer told them they would make if they insisted on attempting to do things a certain way, and refused to do it.

Of course, they blame the junior and discipline him.

Junior then leaves for a new job.

Other programmers in the company look at the code. The Perl programmers say they should be able to deal with it, the others say no. Of course, those pesky Perl programmers aren't to be trusted.

So they hire a trusted associate of one of the current managers. He knows a little Perl, but not enough to scare them.

Management now is sure what the problem is.

Perl.

If only everything was written in a sane language, like VB or C#, this type of stuff would not happen

The the guy in charge shuffles people around, creates a split between development and production, and hires a production Director to handle the day to day, while the Windows centric Director becomes in charge of Development.

Of, of course, the new production manager also only knows Windows, and considers himself VERY technical. So he can safely ignore how things currently work as he makes changes to make them "better".

One of the decent Perl programmers sees the writing on the wall and finds a new job.

She is replaced by a junior Perl programmer who know how to say Yes.

The contract project manager and contract "brilliant" programmer go off on their own to create a whiz bang automation system to "streamline" operations.

Several months later they present it.

The Perl / Unix programmers look back and forth at each other. The whisper.

This is attempting to reimplement something we already had, is doing it poorly, and it something we could whip together in a day or so.

They are told to shutup. Obviously, this system is wonderful and they will use it for all their projects.

They respond: But it runs 10 times slower and forces us to move data through systems that have nothing to do with the project.

They are told they don't understand how wonderful it is, and they should just shutup and use it. It is obvious any further argument will result in people being fired.

They shut up.

A year passes. Customers are not happy, some announce they are leaving, others don't bother. They just give us less and less work.

Guy in charge claims it is because the business is not there, a natural business cycle, and rides the death spiral.

Has another re-org. Gets rid of a few more Perl programmers.

Add a few windows VB and SQL/Server "trigger" programmers. Add more managers to manager the fewer Perl/Unix programmers.

Gets to a point where there are only 2 Perl people in the organization, and makes sure there is no chance of any new work being done in it.

The final 2 are now supporting the projects of 8 people, which mean they can't possibly keep up.

Which of course means Perl is the problem.