Re: Some reflections on the Brainbench Perl Test
by Your Mother (Archbishop) on Dec 13, 2008 at 01:17 UTC
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Looks like they have a few (3 or more?) Perl tests. This curriculum page makes it look like you got a stripped down version.
I took an in-house test at a recruiter's office about 1.5 years ago which had two broken questions (concretely wrong answers on things like args to built-ins) and many poor or v4-5.4 practices considered the right answer. I was in shock thinking I'd just lost the job. I complained about a couple of the questions and I was told that quite a few other applicants had said exactly the same thing. I ended up with the job after all. Not a fun experience though.
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Re: Some reflections on the Brainbench Perl Test
by mr_mischief (Monsignor) on Dec 13, 2008 at 04:42 UTC
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The Brainbench Perl tests I've taken were a joke, frankly. I'm glad I took them just for sake of curiosity and not because a job depended on them. The certificates look pretty nice.
I took some other company's Perl test as part of the application for a job a few years ago. I don't remember the name of it, but the questions mostly were much more sane.
There are, so far as I am aware, no Perl tests endorsed by Larry, The Perl Foundation, or any publisher or author of the better-known books on Perl.
I'm not sure a certification test meant to be taken in the usual time frame for those sorts of things could even come close to measuring more than glancing Perl knowledge. The language is just too large, complex, and flexible to cover in half an hour or even four hours. All one can be sure of realistically is that a decent test will trip up those who are dishonest about knowing the very basics of the language. Anything past that would require a very good test and perhaps some wishful thinking.
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Re: Some reflections on the Brainbench Perl Test
by submersible_toaster (Chaplain) on Dec 13, 2008 at 16:10 UTC
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It's difficult to critique a moving target, as I am not convinced that the Brainbench perl 'quiz' I did in 2007 bears any resemblance to that which you have experienced, and by the sounds of it - there are several perl exams.
From memory (rusty) it dealt with more of the basic language than idioms or patterns prevalent in perl. I do recall skipping a couple of questions that I regarded as un-answerable per the text. I've also undergone some home-grown perl tests from various employers which generally have a similar focus on depth of understanding of the language and syntax. My favorite question from that pool was "How would you parse a CSV input?" , the answer of course being.. "Don't!, use Text::CSV and get on with your life."
I can't believe it's not psellchecked
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"Yes yes, but what if a sniper takes a shot at you every time you load cpan?"
"I'd have to start looking for another job, sir, as, apparently, this one is far too dangerous to my health."
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Re: Some reflections on the Brainbench Perl Test
by converter (Priest) on Dec 13, 2008 at 15:53 UTC
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I don't recall all the details, but a few years ago I had a similar experience with the Brainbench Perl exam and as a result of my list of complaints (with corrections) was invited to serve as a reviewer for a revision of the exam. Several corrections were made to the newly revised exam as a result of my reviews, but Brainbench were not interested in focusing on more advanced topics at the time. I vaguely recall having the impression that Brainbench had determined that customers were only interested in verifying applicants' knowledge of Perl for very basic tasks, and that other languages were more appropriate for real application development. Unfortunate.
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Re: Some reflections on the Brainbench Perl Test
by CountZero (Bishop) on Dec 13, 2008 at 22:46 UTC
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I think I said it before, Perlmonks should issue Perl-certificates, not based upon a silly quiz, but based upon the level of Perl knowledge shown in answering and posing questions. I'm sure one of our Monks can whip-up a module to print nice certificates to be signed by the "Chancellor of the Certification Division" or the "Curate of the Inquisitory Board into Practical Perl knowledge".
CountZero A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James
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I can think of a pretty basic algorithm to make this fly. First, you probably discard levels/experience as showing up to vote can place you among the mighty given enough time. Then the ratings of any post with lines of code are measured positive against negative (not sure how or in what formula). A level of "competent" is determined by identifying a monk who is recognized as such, but not by much :), and then peg the scale to that code:positive/negative node rating measure. Anyone above is PM Certified™. Categories of certification can be tag mapped from the use statements in a monk's posted code samples. E.g.: considering my own posts, I would expect to be auto-certified for CGI/Ajax but not Sysadmin.
All y'all are lucky I'm too busy to try to make this into working code right now.
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Re: Some reflections on the Brainbench Perl Test
by chromatic (Archbishop) on Dec 13, 2008 at 23:39 UTC
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If I were hiring programmers, I'd give them the Assess Your Agility quiz before checking language certifications.
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{Waving-fingers open-quote}Agility{Waving-fingers close-quote} is a myth. Just another meaningless statistics based, silver-bullet "paradigm".
And given 5 or 10 years, you'll realise that too.
Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
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Agility is a myth.
In that case, how can anyone argue with such a well-defended and diligently researched assertion as that?
Tuesday will be the 24th stable monthly release of Parrot in a row. We don't score 100% on that quiz, but I'm happy to compare our score now versus three years ago and put that up against your "evidence" any day.
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Re: Some reflections on the Brainbench Perl Test
by sundialsvc4 (Abbot) on Dec 16, 2008 at 00:59 UTC
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I respect BrainBench, in a caveat emptor sort of way, for being as successful as they have been at dishing-out pure crap :-) and somehow making money at it.
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