Re^2: Perl(Monks) University

Let’s face it: certifications are a product, and a damned profitable one, at that. Plenty of folks, and plenty of companies too, have been ~~suckered into believing that~~ persuaded that “if only” they can hang such-and-such certificate on their wall (and, if they like, tack on such-and-such letters after their last names), that the gates of Nirvana will magically open before their eyes. A perfectly unreasonable expectation, of course, but the grass is always greener on the other side of any fence.

I find, though, that experience is what people really want. It doesn’t really matter so much if you are building applications “in Perl,” or “in VB,” or “in Ruby.” What matters is that you are building applications, and servicing existing ones, in real business environments and for real people. You showed yourself to be competent, easy to work with, professional, trustworthy and reliable. You have amassed a group of people who will speak well of you for what you have done. You do not try to “know it all,” because you have mastered the art of finding out “what you need to know at a particular time,” at that particular time. If a new language system appears to be the right tool for a new engagement, well, by now you only need a single weekend to adequately prepare. (And no, you’re not bluffing anyone.)

There is no “certification” that can equal that.

The “language haters,” quite frankly, I ignore. I ignore them because they are demonstrating that they don’t have anything useful to say. If they want to pick a fight with me, to thrust a burning torch in my face, I merely decline to catch fire, and move on about my business. The peddlers of certificates receive a polite but firm decline. Their mailings go into the recycle bin.

The people who tell me that, in order to improve an existing system, I must re-write that system in “trendy new language Blah” ... I also am reasonably polite to these people, but I ignore them completely. (I do, always, allocate a block of time to at least cursorily familiarize myself with the latest newcomer. There’s always room for one more good idea, and “latest languages” are usually where you’ll find them.) Every language that is in use today, at least from PL/1 forward, was somebody’s silver bullet that was going to make the application backlog disappear and allow you to reduce your programming staff count by two-thirds. Another unrealistic expectation. Some spectacularly good work has been made in all of them, and some spectacularly bad work, and a whole lot of pure-mediocrity. But the language in question, whatever it was, was neither cause nor cure.

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Re^3: Perl(Monks) University by InfiniteSilence (Curate) on Mar 31, 2011 at 19:51 UTC
As I am writing this proposal (and still continuing to gather resources/information from online resources to support the assertions it will contain) I keep butting up against that awful word, 'certification.' Let me briefly describe what certification is (in my view) and how this proposal is not certification and how it would be difficult (but certainly not impossible) for hiring organizations/etc. to use any status conferred by it whilst simultaneously making it valuable. Briefly, certification essentially is much like a small wooden bar my grammar school gym teacher used to hold while he would make us to run in a circle around the gym. While running he would shove out the bar in front of us and say, 'jump over it.' Simple enough, I'd say, and leap over the little thing before doing another easy lap. When I came 'round again however that mean teacher raised the bar. Suddenly I had to jump much higher to get across it. Other kids stumbled, fell, or simply refused to jump. So certification in IT is an attempt to verify or validate knowledge by setting a particular bar -- one that involves question/answer style proficiency. I find that the main problem most people have with certification is not that they are expected to meet some expectation but rather whether the particular bar chosen is adequate to actually prepare them for the work ahead. Since the most common bar used is the question/answer format a common complaint about certification is that there are people who are brilliant at passing tests but cannot actually solve IT problems who obtain certification. I had never really met a person like this until about two years ago. A young fellow talked his way onto a large implementation I was working on purely by exhibiting his impressive 'knowledge.' Very soon afterward I was stuck working late nights fixing his errors and trying to help him through the numerous mistakes he was making. Having learned from experiences like this one my proposal is to do away with the question/answer style bar. In this proposed system the bar will consist of targeted project work that will be graded on a scale that is openly described. This is actually the method used for the written portion of a law school examination. In an examination of this type a given scenario is offered and the student must use the rules of law to come up with an answer. In law school this is typically done in IRAC (issue, rule, application, conclusion) format, but in a computer science course you would simply write your code at the level expected of you given the target audience. For instance, if you were a 100 level student or lower (meaning you were doing remedial work) you could write a very C-looking style Perl solution to a given problem and it would be graded (forgivingly) on style, execution -- it has to actually work, and other aspects I have not yet come up with. Students will not actually ever get a grade either. They will receive a recommndation to move onward to the next course or a recommendation that they repeat the existing one. Scores on projects could be appealed to reviewers at a higher level if the original grader is unfair, but only if the grading violated the published grading rules (similar to law school exams). So, it would be hard for a third party to assess your skill level by any certification given by such a university because no certification is ever actually conferred. Instead, you either get a recommendation to move to the next level or not. This model more closely matches how adults learn computer science topics because they will start learning something, get distracted, and often need to take a particular course multiple times before being ready to progress to the next level. So long as the courses are really inexpensive this can be done affordably. Celebrate Intellectual Diversity	[reply]

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Re^3: Perl(Monks) University
by InfiniteSilence (Curate) on Mar 31, 2011 at 19:51 UTC

As I am writing this proposal (and still continuing to gather resources/information from online resources to support the assertions it will contain) I keep butting up against that awful word, 'certification.' Let me briefly describe what certification is (in my view) and how this proposal is not certification and how it would be difficult (but certainly not impossible) for hiring organizations/etc. to use any status conferred by it whilst simultaneously making it valuable.

Briefly, certification essentially is much like a small wooden bar my grammar school gym teacher used to hold while he would make us to run in a circle around the gym. While running he would shove out the bar in front of us and say, 'jump over it.' Simple enough, I'd say, and leap over the little thing before doing another easy lap. When I came 'round again however that mean teacher raised the bar. Suddenly I had to jump much higher to get across it. Other kids stumbled, fell, or simply refused to jump.

So certification in IT is an attempt to verify or validate knowledge by setting a particular bar -- one that involves question/answer style proficiency. I find that the main problem most people have with certification is not that they are expected to meet some expectation but rather whether the particular bar chosen is adequate to actually prepare them for the work ahead.

Since the most common bar used is the question/answer format a common complaint about certification is that there are people who are brilliant at passing tests but cannot actually solve IT problems who obtain certification. I had never really met a person like this until about two years ago. A young fellow talked his way onto a large implementation I was working on purely by exhibiting his impressive 'knowledge.' Very soon afterward I was stuck working late nights fixing his errors and trying to help him through the numerous mistakes he was making.

Having learned from experiences like this one my proposal is to do away with the question/answer style bar. In this proposed system the bar will consist of targeted project work that will be graded on a scale that is openly described. This is actually the method used for the written portion of a law school examination. In an examination of this type a given scenario is offered and the student must use the rules of law to come up with an answer. In law school this is typically done in IRAC (issue, rule, application, conclusion) format, but in a computer science course you would simply write your code at the level expected of you given the target audience. For instance, if you were a 100 level student or lower (meaning you were doing remedial work) you could write a very C-looking style Perl solution to a given problem and it would be graded (forgivingly) on style, execution -- it has to actually work, and other aspects I have not yet come up with. Students will not actually ever get a grade either. They will receive a recommndation to move onward to the next course or a recommendation that they repeat the existing one. Scores on projects could be appealed to reviewers at a higher level if the original grader is unfair, but only if the grading violated the published grading rules (similar to law school exams).

So, it would be hard for a third party to assess your skill level by any certification given by such a university because no certification is ever actually conferred. Instead, you either get a recommendation to move to the next level or not. This model more closely matches how adults learn computer science topics because they will start learning something, get distracted, and often need to take a particular course multiple times before being ready to progress to the next level. So long as the courses are really inexpensive this can be done affordably.

Celebrate Intellectual Diversity

[reply]