Re: Perl Certification

[talexb]

Not in favour -- but I didn't downvote your node. :)

Certification doesn't really carry any meaning to me when it's associated with Perl. So someone with a certification knows seven ways to use split. Huh. But can they write good code?

Joel Spolsky, pretty smart guy, has a great article about interviewing, and he posits two requirements for a hire: a) smart, and b) gets things done.

One or the other doesn't do it: if they're smart, that's handy, but of they are 'completion challenged', that's no good. Or if they're really hard workers, but go about their task totally in the wrong way, that's not very productive either.

So my question to you is, what have you taken away from these discussions about Perl certification?

• Perl Certification ( oh yeah, it's that time again... almost )
• Certification In PERL
• Perl Certification revisited
• Expert programmer's certification
• Perl Certified!
• Perl Certification

Why do you think it's a good idea, or is necessary?

[cosmicperl]

Hi Alex,
  I have read through all those, and everything else I could find online.
I believe certification is required for Perl to be more accepted by big business
I believe it'll provide much needed funding for Perl development


Lyle

[shmem]

AFAIK perl evolved pretty well without big business funding. Guess why? Because perl is orthogonal to business, and fits big and small. Perl is a humble language designed from its very beginning to ease getting things done. Perl never has been a flagship of a company. But it is, since its beginning, an immense and invaluable help for people to get their things done, everywhere.

Every now and then in my company, strategies bubble up, concepts and/or products to make customers happy with. More often than not things don't work out nicely on planning, implementing and integrating, things need to be debugged, glued, makeshifts need to be done. Guess what I reach out for? You name it.

Perl exists not as an edifice, but as an act of love - and so its funding. Congenial businesses fund perl, and they need no certs for labeling anybody, because they look at the person, not the label (skill tests notwithstanding.) Yeah, wishful thinking, you might say, but at very much places this is blissful truth.

[talexb]

I believe certification is required for Perl to be more accepted by big business

Based on .. what?

Perl is quite well accepted at a variety of businesses -- although it's open source, there is support, especially if you have a couple of decent Perl developers on hand. It's also possible to hire bright people and train them to develop in Perl.

I believe certification is probably favoured more by the HR folks -- it gives them something easily quantifiable. The technical managers don't care so much; or at least (heh) that's my opinion. Likewise which university (if any) someone went to. I went to a great school, but I also graduated a while ago. But get me into an interview situation, and I get really excited to have the opportunity to talk about some lovely complicated thing that I developed recently.

I think bright, enthusiastic (or passionate) and gets things done are pre-requisites for a decent software developer -- some certification means almost nothing.

I believe it'll provide much needed funding for Perl development

Why?

Is funding that badly needed that we need to lower ourselves to organizing certification? Why even connect the two? If we need funding, go out and get it -- no need to tie it to certification (something that I find unnecessary in any case).