On Mon, Jan 28, 2002 at 10:34:20AM +0000, robin szemeti wrote:
> On Sunday 27 January 2002 15:58, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
> > There's nothing wrong with distance learning on a subject for your own
> > self-recognized growth, but you won't get any kind of certification
> > that means a darn to the community without Larry's blessing, which
> > won't happen.
> ummm .. I dont think it's the "community" we're trying to convince here. Its
> the PHB's and recruiters. Not having some standard test they can apply to
> discover wether someone really is a "Perl programmer" or a skript kiddie
> means they end up hiring the occasional idjut ... which means that crap Perl
> gets written, which means it harms the reputation of the "swiss army
> chainsaw".
Quite... how many of us "good programmers" [1] have come across and had to
maintain legacy perl code that looks like someone having a spazm at the
keyboard and isn't documented?
Fortunately, I get to write the IT procedures manual and I'm working on style
guides for our code and then making my own code meet the standards - including
commenting, POD, and my particular way of using TT (which I think is very
sensible, might get round to posting it somewhere so others can cast their
opinions).
Given that people keep saying "Certification will happen if there is demand",
I think we should recognise that there *is* demand, from the coders if not the
PHBs. I'm sure everyone here would like a piece of paper they can wave at a
suit in an interview which acknowledges that they *can* do their shit, to
differentiate them from the kid who's just walked in off the street with a copy
of the Llama under his arm [2].
So assuming that certification *is* going to happen, it makes sense to have
a certification which is more like a Cisco qualification than a Microsoft
one, IYSWIM. I think that the "professional Perl companies" (ActiveState and
O'Reilly, AFAICS) aren't going to be too bothered with vendor lock-in because
they have the common-sense [3] to see that for Perl that would be futile.
I should take this to a Perl-cert list for the technical details, I'm just
trying to say that saying "It'll never work, there's no need, there's no
point trying" may well lead to the established Perl certification, when it
happens (and it is a when, not an if), being expensive bog-paper...
Of course, given what people have been saying about raising public awareness
of Perl 6, launching a certification scheme aimed specifically at *that*
may be a fantastic way to get it into the suit-wearing mindspace...
Alex
[1] I mean in terms of style, structure etc., rather than technical ability,
mostly so I can include myself ;)
[2] That is, differentiate to a suit, who can't tell a well-written script
from a poorly written script from alphabetti spaghetti.
[3] They're involved with Perl, they must be reasonably clueful *g* [4]
[4] OK, there are exceptions to this...
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