in reply to Perl Certified!

I won't comment as to the validity of certification, but free certification? What's to stop me from taking the test a 100 times till I get %100? In the real world (with like Java for example), certification costs like ~$150, so people don't endup taking the test 100 times. The only way I could see a perl certification scheme is if it wasn't free, which brings up a whole bunch of other issues (who's gonna run it, who can give out certificates .... )

Now, as for the "a list of what the programer need to know" you have there, are you nuts?

None of that seems reasonable. Up until recently, java programmer certification required knowledge of AWT (GUI toolkit basically), and now they took it out. Why? Cause It has nothing to do with being a java programmer.

What a perl programmer should know the basics of syntaxt (pod included), datatypes, context, and a generous knowledge of built-in functions.

Now, should a perl programmer should also know the basics of fork-ing? What about platform caveats?
How about threading?
What kind of threading?
Should there be a perl5.6 certified perl programmer?
A perl 5.7 certified perl programmer?

Man that's just too much confusion for my taste.
Since there is no ISO/ANSI perl standard, I feel perl certification would be premature.

Wait, maybe a feature knowledge type of certification is in order?
You go in, you pay your XX amont of dollars, you're greeted by a perl guru (or higher -- 7 stages of a perl programmer) and he asses your knowledge of perl, and you get a certificate looking something like 

John Doe ....
Throrough knowledge:
    forking concepts
    threading concepts
    oo perl
    tie interface
    socket programming
    XS
    ...
I say merlyn,Dominus and TheDamian and others who teach/taught perl for a living give it some serious thought (who's better qualified at designing tests/certification but teachers? not me).

MJD says you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo!
I run a Win32 PPM repository for perl 5.6x+5.8x. I take requests.
** The Third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Perl Certified!
by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Apr 24, 2003 at 12:24 UTC
    Oh, Dominus already did. For some time, he would certify you. I think the fee was around $2. You could choose your own title. If you wanted to be a certified Perl sky-diver, that was fine too.

    Abigail

[reply]
      The sad thing is that I would value that certification.

      Sure, it is a joke. But it means that you know who Dominus is, you don't like certifications, and you have a sense of humor about it. This says a lot of things about you, most of them positive from my perspective. :-)

[reply]
Re: Re: Perl Certified!
by oakbox (Chaplain) on Apr 24, 2003 at 11:53 UTC
    That's what I would prefer, a series of certs that highlight what areas of Perl you have explored. Have one cert for the basics and then additional certs for each 'major' area of expertise. If I'm in charge of a group of programmers maintaining a web site, I don't really care how much knowledge you have about the Win32 modules, it's just not relevant to what we are doing here.

    • How do you keep people from learning the test by taking it several times? Have a VERY LARGE pool of questions from which any single test pulls its questions.
    • How do you test someone's learning ability? There are other tests for that, but in a purely perl universe, just give extremely difficult questions and measure how long it takes someone to answer them. This gives you a good bead on whether the test taker can find relevent information quickly.
    • Psychological tests also exist that can measure your ability to focus on a task, analyze a problem, work in teams/ work unsupervised, etc. (disclaimer, I'm working for a psychological testing firm putting those tests on the internet)
    This is absolutely do-able, the question is one of authority and commonality. The company/group handing out certs has to have the reputation to back those certs up and there have to be enough people using the certs to make them a standard.

    I think a relatively low fee is a good idea ~10 USD. At that price, the company giving certs isn't going to make very much money (or will just break even), but I think that adds to the 'authority' side of the equation. The testing authority is giving certs because it is fullfilling a function in the community, not because they see it as a huge profit center.

    oakbox

[reply]
Re: Re: Perl Certified!
by allolex (Curate) on Apr 27, 2003 at 10:13 UTC
    I won't comment as to the validity of certification, but free certification? What's to stop me from taking the test a 100 times till I get %100? In the real world (with like Java for example), certification costs like ~$150, so people don't endup taking the test 100 times. The only way I could see a perl certification scheme is if it wasn't free, which brings up a whole bunch of other issues (who's gonna run it, who can give out certificates .... )

    So now only the rich have the option to get certified that way :)

    --
    Allolex

[reply]

In Section Meditations