Hiring PHP / Perl Developer – What’s a Fair Budget?

Hi guys,
I’m planning to hire a PHP and/or Perl developer for some backend scripts and maintenance work, and I’d like a bit of guidance before moving forward.

From a buyer’s point of view:

> When does Perl still make more sense than PHP?
> What’s a reasonable budget for small scripts, fixes, or automation?
> Any red flags to watch out for when hiring for older or mixed codebases?

Not looking for the cheapest option just trying to set realistic expectations before posting a hire thread.

Appreciate any input. Thanks!

Trust Wave said:

> When does Perl still make more sense than PHP?

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Perl is very heavy on regex and text processing. It is also known to behave like a system language.

If you're doing extensive log processing, text manipulation at scale. Perl makes more sense.

Everything also depends on your existing code base. Is it a full-fledged system?

PHP makes more sense when it's a web app, or a CMS. Or if you're building or working with REST API architecture.

Essentially, if you're building web-based software that is people facing, I'd recommend PHP. If you're doing a lot of backend scripting then Perl would be good.

Also, it'll be way easier to find a PHP dev as compared to finding someone who's very good at Perl.

Trust Wave said:

> What’s a reasonable budget for small scripts, fixes, or automation?

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If it's something minor, it can be as little as a couple hundred dollars for a job that can be quoted for a couple hours If it's mid-range or high range with edge-case management etc., the pricing goes higher

Your budget will increase if your existing codebase has older dependencies and/or is built for an older version of PHP/Perl. Also if there's poor documentation. Or essentially if it has stopped working.

Trust Wave said:

> Any red flags to watch out for when hiring for older or mixed codebases?

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Legacy code debugging and upgrade is a skill, that is often not found in even the better devs.

A good red flag would be someone outright proposing - "I'll rewrite it entirely from scratch".

I mean there are legit reasons to rewrite. And I've done it too on way too many occasions. But this should only come after a thorough audit of the existing code and understanding constraints at client level.

Second would be you should absolutely find someone who can perform a read-only audit, introduce heavy logging to the system and make small rewrites/edits/enhancements that are documented and can be reversed.

any language which have alot of resources available online are easy to work

It's excellent that you're taking the time to think about this before you hire someone. If the current system is already built a lot in Perl and is reliable, it usually makes sense to keep using it for maintenance to avoid having to rewrite things that don't need to be. When it comes to little scripts or fixes, budgets usually depend on how complicated the code is and how good the old code is. So, make sure you know what you want to do and how much it will cost up front. Also, ask for examples of similar work and make sure they're okay with working with older or mixed codebases. That's usually where their experience truly shows.