On Friday, February 25, 2005, at 04:00 PM, John Saylor wrote:
hi
( 05.02.25 15:51 -0500 ) James Linden Rose, III:What Perl is really lacking is a widely recognized, widely accessible certification program.
hmm ...
i don't think this would help much. besides, it goes against TMTOWTDI [a
single certification authority].
On Friday, February 25, 2005, at 04:07 PM, Alex Brelsfoard wrote:
I like this idea. I think Perl certification WOULD make the world happier.
Then again, I like Greg's idea.
Think maybe some of us PerlMongers could get together and actually start
up a real Perl certification program?
--Alex
Let me tell a story. Me and my former CMU buddy fly to Bombay, start a company, and working with Indian partners who had zero technical experience but seemed to know management (i.e., were one of the lucky few with the money to hire people), leave explicit instructions that we want to hire Perl programmers to do some web oriented development work. An ad in the Times of India nets us some 300 applicants that we try to interview in about 3 days. I can't recall any applicant who lacked a background in Java because that's what was being taught at the universities. Looking for Perl was like looking for a needle in the proverbial haystack - anyone who knew it learned it by happenstance working for some prior employer or as a personal project. Why? Because Java had a certification program that the would-be programmer could wave in an employers face. Perl doesn't, and when you're poor and desperate to find work you put your effort into proving your competitive with the next guy instead of intellectual pursuits in the realm of computer logic. After you land the job you can pursue true loves and higher art forms - but that would require you to be a rare and gifted individual who finds motivation in the intellectual pursuit of Perl instead of the monetary.
Almost everyone who had used Perl and represented themselves as knowing it, with the exception of maybe 2 or 3 people, sucked. The skills were barely there.
The few geniuses we were lucky to find were amazing Perl programmers... gifted, and very full of promise, but our technically challenged partners were left to manage the enterprise when we returned to the US. Having no idea, or rather incapable of understanding why we wanted to hire Perl guys when EVERYONE knew Java, they called up a friend who did web development in Bombay. Like them, he was not a technically savvy guy, but like so many who have the money to start a company hired people who would advise him on technology. Who did he hire? Java programmers. What did he tell my ungifted partners? Get rid of the Perl people. EVERYONE is using Java. They fired our most talented and promising people and proceeded on a course of language mutiny that led to a complete and total destruction of the project. My handpicked staff of the super-talented was transformed in my absence into a room of certified Java programers - with no spark of imagination, and no drive to produce for the thrill of creating. Productivity vanished completely and I lost more of my hairline.
The real world is full of dummies who are in charge, almost entirely because of early life advantages that are mostly unmerited and simply a matter of happenstance. Dummies, deep down inside, know they are dummies, and certificates reassure them, and alleviate their fear of being found out. Certification for Perl will certainly NOT raise the intellectual bar of its practitioners, but it will certainly make many more people into converts on both the programmer and the manager side of the equation. I think that would benefit Perl, but I don't see that it will benefit the currently standing group of monger gurus. Unless the mongers were to transform themselves into some kind of certification organization (which I would love to assist in organizing if there was enough interest).
Jim
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