cosmicperl has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:
Hi All,
Hate to drag up an old debate, but in my recent decision to strive forth to become a Perl master I looked into Perl certification. Found a bit about it here and on perl.org... Nothing seemed to really lead anywhere. A bit on here from Randal saying Larry wouldn't bless it, although all I found from Larry was:-
from January 17, 2001 Maya Tamiya at Perl/Ruby Conference in Kyoto
"CL: Some people seem to see the need for Perl certification. What do you think?
LW: I think someone else can do that :-) I'm not going to tell people whether they're certified or not. My approach to language design has always been that people should learn just enough of the languages to get their jobs done. They shouldn't have to learn the whole language to begin with. But with certification, you have to be learning the whole language. Some people feel more comfortable that way. I guess if you want to hire experts, you want to make sure they're experts. Certification is useful for that.
But most of the programming out there is not done by Perl experts. It's mostly done by Perl novices, and they sometimes make sloppy programs, that's ok. They learn by experience to do better over time and eventually they become experts and then, if they want to get certified and somebody wants to certify them, that's fine. I just don't want to do that myself." (thank poqui for posting)
To me this sounds like Larry would be happy with it...
That was a few years ago, 2001/2002. I see that BrainBench still have their version, and I've also come across eLearners who seem to have another version...
The last posts I found about this were at use Perl;
That was 2 years ago.. Has anything happened that I missed? Is most the community still against it? It would be nice to have some sort of certificate I could flash at people I put proposals to. But I don't want one that no one here respects.
I know Perl has so many area's and can do so many varied applications, that I'm sure (i hope) that the masters here will agree that you can't know everything (apart from maybe larry)
Maybe modular certifications, such as Perl System administration, Perl CGI, etc...
Lyle
(hoping that this subject might go a bit further than it has previously)
Update: I think we can all agree that certification isn't the best way to rate any programmers, let alone Perl ones. But on the other hand most of us can agree that certification is what employers, HR and businesses look for and understand. I personally don't like putting together proposals and sitting down going through presentations, but that's how business do it, it's what they expect, and for them at least it's what works... Should Perl (or Perl developers at least) miss out on jobs and projects partly because there is no certification? Perl may be able to reinvent the wheel with programming, but it's not going to reinvent the way businesses work and view things
Hate to drag up an old debate, but in my recent decision to strive forth to become a Perl master I looked into Perl certification. Found a bit about it here and on perl.org... Nothing seemed to really lead anywhere. A bit on here from Randal saying Larry wouldn't bless it, although all I found from Larry was:-
from January 17, 2001 Maya Tamiya at Perl/Ruby Conference in Kyoto
"CL: Some people seem to see the need for Perl certification. What do you think?
LW: I think someone else can do that :-) I'm not going to tell people whether they're certified or not. My approach to language design has always been that people should learn just enough of the languages to get their jobs done. They shouldn't have to learn the whole language to begin with. But with certification, you have to be learning the whole language. Some people feel more comfortable that way. I guess if you want to hire experts, you want to make sure they're experts. Certification is useful for that.
But most of the programming out there is not done by Perl experts. It's mostly done by Perl novices, and they sometimes make sloppy programs, that's ok. They learn by experience to do better over time and eventually they become experts and then, if they want to get certified and somebody wants to certify them, that's fine. I just don't want to do that myself." (thank poqui for posting)
To me this sounds like Larry would be happy with it...
That was a few years ago, 2001/2002. I see that BrainBench still have their version, and I've also come across eLearners who seem to have another version...
The last posts I found about this were at use Perl;
That was 2 years ago.. Has anything happened that I missed? Is most the community still against it? It would be nice to have some sort of certificate I could flash at people I put proposals to. But I don't want one that no one here respects.
I know Perl has so many area's and can do so many varied applications, that I'm sure (i hope) that the masters here will agree that you can't know everything (apart from maybe larry)
Maybe modular certifications, such as Perl System administration, Perl CGI, etc...
Lyle
(hoping that this subject might go a bit further than it has previously)
Update: I think we can all agree that certification isn't the best way to rate any programmers, let alone Perl ones. But on the other hand most of us can agree that certification is what employers, HR and businesses look for and understand. I personally don't like putting together proposals and sitting down going through presentations, but that's how business do it, it's what they expect, and for them at least it's what works... Should Perl (or Perl developers at least) miss out on jobs and projects partly because there is no certification? Perl may be able to reinvent the wheel with programming, but it's not going to reinvent the way businesses work and view things
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