On Tue, Mar 14, 2000 at 05:30:48PM -0000, Peterson, Jonathan wrote:
> So what we really need are Perl standards of competency. A certificate that
> proves that at some point in time you knew Perl to that standard might be
> useful. Or it might not. If you are a professional contractor you might be
> bothered to get the certificate, but it's no big deal.
>
> So, maybe the emphasis needs to be less on certification in the sense of
> exams and tests and all that, and more on a way to define common and widely
> accepted standards of competency....
The way I see it is somewhat similar to the secondary school certificate
I went through when I was about 16. For each examination or project we
did, there were competencies or skills which were measured. For
instance, a project to write a software program might have:
Identification of suitable technologies to solve the problem
Use of appropriate algorithms
Knowledge of programming language syntax
Readability of source code
User interface
Each would be marked High/Medium/Low. You'd get marks of 3/2/1
respectively which were added up and then mapped onto a grade of
A/B/C/D/E/Unsatisfactory
It seems to me that if one were to identify core competencies for Perl,
such as:
Understanding of basic Perl data types (scalars/arrays/hashes)
Knowledge of Perl's built-in functions
Understanding of regexp syntax and use
and then write questions to address each area, you could require
something like N% correct for each competency, which would show that
people understood all the main areas of Perl.
But I'll discuss this in more depth on the perlcert list...
K.
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