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in reply to Perl Certification revisited

Since you've obviously read the historical discussions, do you have anything new to bring up? Can you demonstrate how it would be anything other than a license to print money for the certifying body as they get officially blessed by some organization (TPF?) to do this, or how it will help to select good candidates for jobs?

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

update: Your response doesn't address either of my points, and talks about things that won't be affected one way or another by certification. Certification will not help Perl be more accepted, period.

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Re^2: Perl Certification revisited
by cosmicperl (Chaplain) on Oct 02, 2007 at 00:56 UTC
    The Microsoft people get to waive their shiny certificates in employers faces, so I'm wondering if companies that need a project done, and haven't decided what language it's going to be done in get swayed by this? In my opinion a lot of the stuff done on sites in .net should be perl/cgi.
      But if I'm puting forward a proposal against some .net people and they have their shiny pieces of paper I'm very sure this has an effect on who they choose to go with (although I do get to laugh when they later decide to change servers to Linux and hit problems).

      Although I know from your previous posts that you are quite against it, if anyone were in a good position to make such a thing (or things) it would be you.
      Why not "Learning Perl exam certified", "Intermediate Perl exam certified" or something akin. Or broken down further into say 10 or more modules covering different area's, so employers could get an idea if the candidate had the right Perl knowledge for the job (CGI, SysAdmin, Linux, Win32, etc).

      Would you consider asking Larry if he'd
    bless $randal_certification_modules;

    I think free certification would cause problems, why not have it cheap, and all monies (minus running costs) go toward the development of Perl 6?

    P.S. I've been reading your books, after learning from other books that I thought were good, you're learning Perl book alone has taught me many things I should have already known. I wish I started with it in the first place, and am looking forward to reading Intermediate Perl (should be onto that one in a week).

    Lyle
    update: I don't think certification will be the single solution to making Perl more accepted. But I do believe that it will go a long way toward doing so.
[reply]
[d/l]

      I am delighted to see that after a bit more than a year your opinions have not influenced how employers determine if they want to hire me or not. I can only be suspicious at someone like you, especially when i see you giving advice like so:

        Most programming guides for Perl will teach you how to write scripts for Linux. You then later have to update your code to work for Win32 from another guide. It's all a lot easier if you code your script for Linux and Win32 in the first place.

      What a total crock of crap. No. No i do not need to later update my code to work for Win32 because i don't write code for Microsoft. I think we see your true nature now -- no wonder you want Perl to adopt certifications, no wonder you want people to have to pay for them. That is exactly what Microsoft wants too. Why don't you guys just stick to .NET and leave Unix programming to the professionals? We don't need you, your certifications, or your bad advice.

      Thanks, but no thanks.

      jeffa

      L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)
[reply]
        Jeffa - I do not agree with your possition regarding Microsoft! I much do not like Microsoft, but to be employed you should do what employer need to be done. If anything need to be done in Windows - you need to be able to do it - if you are PERL developer - with PERL! Certificate does not needed to suck monney from developers! It is needed to provide to potencial employer proof of your PERL knowlage. That only a way to present it when you could not show it in your experience. Another way to be usefull: certification could be a way to be sure that you know it well enough! It shoud cost something because it need to be prepared, get some way to process an exam, have somebody time to review the test results and have it printed in any way.
[reply]
      Yes, I became one of those Microsoft people back in 2000, so what?
      The only good was that I got mature enough to switch to Linux and its programming ENV.

      Of course - they also give you a badge and a wallet card, but that's all.
[reply]
      Some of us would love the PERL certification exam to be available. In no other way would we be able to get job opportunities, because we don’t have much, if any, experience. I’ve had a quick stint in PERL development in 1999, but was only allowed limited coding, because the retail company I worked for does not officially accept the language. Soon I’m certifying in SCJP6 just to reskill to portals. In the region I stay, IT training is spread very thin and being able to buy a certification training book online and working through it at own pace makes it accessible. Certification will do the same for PERL – allow this beautiful language growth and expansion.
[reply]

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