On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 21:07:47 -0500, James Linden Rose, III <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Monday, February 28, 2005, at 07:41 PM, Ben Tilly wrote: > > What don't you believe? That there are rabidly anti-certification > > people? That many prominent Perl programmers are among > > them? If you doubt that, then I'll call you reality-challenged to > > your face and point you in the general direction of Randal > > Schwartz. For a sample of what they think and why they think > > that, read http://use.perl.org/articles/04/01/10/0055227.shtml?tid=9. > > Hmm. That page also links to the OSCON 2003 Panel Discussion on Perl > Certification which voted 100 to 7 in favor of certification. That's > not exactly a "bifurcation" of the community, nor is the appellation > "many" appropriate. A tyranny of the minority perhaps. Mr. Shwartz is > either one of the 7 or a compatriot of like mind. He states an opinion > that "Certification is an artificial incline, usually created by those > who stand the most to profit from it. After the initial sunk cost of > getting employers to believe in this artificial slope, such a > corporation then gets to sit back and rake in dough based on the now > artificially created demand for certifications and certification > support (trainings, books, infrastructure, and so on)."
That page also has commentary from several who were there who said that the question was so vague as to not really be about whether you were in favour of certification. It was closer to asking whether you are for or against letting someone research the topic further. Others remember it differently. I was not there so I'm not sure what happened. > I use the Shwartzian transformation all the time... never quite > understood it, but use it like mad, so Randal's Perl credentials are > not in question. That's a red flag. What I'm about to say may come across as unfair, but it is true for all that. In an interview what you just said would make me worried. You're using a technique that you don't understand. How do you know that you're using it appropriately? When is it a win? When not? If you're filling your code with one construct that you don't understand, what other poorly understood constructs are you possibly (mis)using? Are you comfortable with your not understanding the construct? Have you tried to figure it out? (If you want to understand it, my brief explanation at http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=28300 may help.) In short that comment makes me wonder whether you're a person who I wouldn't want to see get a job based on a certification. (I'm not saying that you are, I'm saying that I wonder.) > However Mr. Shwartz's model of the problem does not > reflect majority opinion with respect to the breadth of the issue, When you misspelled "Schwartzian transform", I thought it was possibly a typo. But you've made the same mistake again. His name is Schwartz. With a silent c in it. Agree or disagree with him, it is polite to get his name correct. > (especially as it seems to be peppered with idealism and > anti-capitalism). His arguments strike me more as the ideology of the > status quo, and not as a practical approach to Perl's future. (The > Perl that was and that might have been). Furthermore, he is certainly > not "rabid". Miffed perhaps, but not the extremely emotive. > Supporters of certification on the OSCON Vote on Perl Certification > include Damian Conway, Nathan Torkington, and Tim Wilde. Future advice, people who start and run their own businesses are seldom anti-capitalistic. If you think that they are being so, then you're probably missing something important about how they perceive their own economic interests. As for his rabidity, push him farther, and he might surprise you. Randal is a man of strong opinions which he's willing to forcefully present. I get the impression that certification is something that he definitely holds strong opinions about. > > Speaking personally, what I most dislike about the idea of > > certifications is the likelyhood that I'd be pushed to waste time > > and money demonstrating that I know Perl. My time and my > > money. (Why should an employer who knows that they hired > > an expert wish to invest their money into enabling me to prove > > my competence to others?) > > This is like "which came first, the chicken or the egg?". It sounds > like you don't want to loose a job opportunity to some newbie > certificate wielding neophyte because you didn't want to pay for the > certificate and don't want to be hassled with some stupid test when you > already know your stuff. Hence, you think that your best interest is > served by opposing Certification. Mostly true, though I'd say that I question certification more than oppose it. > But that doesn't change the fact > that Certification will open doors for Perl to be used much more > widely, and will create much more commercial opportunity. Its like a > mercantilist standing in the way of free trade. Fact? I've seen a lot of assertions without supporting evidence. I haven't seen a lot of facts. Nor will repeating the assertions make them into facts. What are the most popular languages? According to the list at http://www.tiobe.com/tpci.htm, right now the list is C, Java, C++, PHP and Perl in that order. I'm not sure how good their list is, but there is no question that those are widespread languages. Of those languages, only Java has widely accepted certifications. (Certifications exist for using C or C++ in specific environments, for instance with Win32, but not to the best of my knowledge for using C or C++ in general.) And I'm far from convinced that the existence of certifications for Java is what got it where it is. > > What is in this picture for me? > > Now you touch on my early point. I do. :-) > > A certification that has very prominent and vocal opponents > > within the community is likely to have an uphill battle to > > acceptance. A certification that didn't have enough support > > for people to learn what they need to pass it is going to find > > that the hill is looking more like a cliff. > > Eh, let us return to my earlier point... a prominent and vocal MINORITY. And the people who actively want certifications are also a prominent and vocal MINORITY. I don't know which is bigger. In a straw poll of the 3 programmers sitting closest to me, one was slightly against, one slightly for, and one didn't care. I think that that's probably representative. I also believe that a specific certification proposal would be more likely to draw criticism when people can see how it doesn't do what they want, and does what they don't want. > > Universities are not supposed to be in the business of > > vocational training. Some academics take that very seriously. > > MIT's charter requires the school to impart practical real-world > knowledge. Carnegie-Mellon was founded to give its students "skills > useful to industry". Nobody challenges their academic credentials - > especially not computer scientists. I don't see that learning Perl is > either vo-tech, or other-worldly. MIT is also the school which introduced Scheme as a way of introducing programming. I doubt that Carnegie-Mellon teaches a course whose purpose is to specifically help you pass the MCSE. (If it does, I guarantee that I can find people in the department who're not very happy about it.) Furthermore even in professional schools (medicine, law, etc), while the school may provide practical training, the faculty are still expected to participate in (and are likely to be primarily judged on) research. That's certainly true of both schools that you mention. I stand by my comment that, charter's notwithstanding, universities are not supposed to be in the business of vocational training. (Although they are often pushed in that direction, particularly by students and parents of students who go there to help job prospects.) > > I consider it more likely that the certification process will open > > divides within the community that leave less energy for people to > > support Perl. > > The mechanism of this divide is? Tectonic plates comprised of hardened > opinions sliding away from each other? Right now Perl is a big tent. Seeing that other people are doing very different things with Perl is kind of nice and doesn't impact you. There is no cause for conflict. With a certification exam, there is cause for conflict. Some compromise needs to be reached over the divergent needs of various subgroups. The exam provides limited space to meet everyone's needs, and the tradeoffs put different groups into competition to use that space as they'd like to see it used. This might work out, or might not. I'm inclined towards pessimism, but have no real evidence supporting that. [...] > > Which of the following topics should be in a certification? In > > what depth? > > > > - OO support > > - Templating tools (Mason, Template::Toolkit, etc) > > - database interfaces > > - XML manipulation tools > > - Graphics libraries > > - How to write XS interfaces > > - interprocess communication > > - The Win32 API > > - Complex regular expressions > > > > Every one of these matters a lot to a segment of the community. > > None of them matter to everyone. I'd suspect that few people > > actually need to understand 2/3 of these topics. Most probably > > only need to know half of them. But different people need to > > know different halves. > > > > No simple certification is going to address this problem. > > I agree. Perl needs, and frankly deserves, a much more complex > certification process than a single one size fits all sheepskin. > Industry would welcome a more qualified system which addresses specific > skills as well. Creating a complex certification process takes a lot more work. And then gets into problems because you have a collection of similar but different certifications, none of which can gain critical mindshare to become useful. For a certification to be useful, there must be a core knowledge set which most can agree on, and which changes slowly. I doubt that there is such a set for Perl. The language itself is big and virtually nobody knows all of it. For any application area you add on various specific pieces of knowledge which apply to nobody else. The real core knowledge set for Perl programmers seems to be a little bit "here's how Perl works" and a lot "here's agreed on good programming process". Certification can work for Java because there is a single vendor (namely Sun) which has an entire stack (language, API, various add-on libraries) that they're pushing - they've defined the core through their control of the language. Certification does not work for C/C++ because there is no such core. But it can work for Windows development because there is a single vendor (Microsoft) which defines the stack of APIs and tools that you're supposed to use - they've defined the core through their control of the OS. Certification does not work for Linux because there is no such core. But it can work for Red Hat because there is a single vendor (Red Hat) which defines the system including the default layout, administration utilities, and versions of everything. (And a Red Hat certification will teach you a lot, but won't make you an expert at, say, Debian administration.) Do you detect a theme here? Cheers, Ben _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
