On Mon, Feb 28, 2005 at 11:57:47AM -0500, Greg London wrote:
> Adam Turoff said:
> > On Mon, Feb 28, 2005 at 10:01:32AM -0500, Greg London wrote:
> >> From a game-theory point of view, I think certification is an overall win.
> >> The worst case scenario for certification would be that gurus have to
> >> get their manager to pay for them to take the test.
> >>
> >> The worst case scenario for no certification would be that perl gets
> >> replaced with some other language that has more programmers.
> >
> > That is a gross oversimplification. There are oodles of ways
> > certification is a net loss; I won't rehash them; they've been
> > mentioned ad nauseum here and elsewhere.
>
> The point of "worst case" is to boil it down to one condition.
> It isn't oversimplification or bifurcation of an issue,
> its worst case result of something.
Stating that the _one_ "worst case for certification" is for Perl
programmers get their managers to pay fees is missing the point. You do
not entertain the possibility that certification could possibly be bad
and do damage to the community, for example.
Another "worst case for certification" is that the community bifurcates
from those who are rabidly anti-certification, and they take their
efforts and talents elsewhere. And their patches. And stop maintaining
their modules.
Another "worst case for certification" is the gradual dumbing down of
the caliber of Perl programmers that Joe Average Manager can hire. I
could go on.
> The oodles of ways that have been mentioned here all revolve
> around an idiot with a certificate, and that isn't any worse
> than the current situation. If there are other, more significant
> problems with certification, then mention them, and it should
> be the end of teh conversation. But just talking about ghosts
> without any evidence doesn't really forward anything.
I'm talking about ghosts because I'm tired of reopening Pandora's box,
thankyouverymuch. :-) But since you've asked for it, here are some of
the more popular ones:
- Certification doesn't _prove_ anything. It's mostly a means to
weed out resumes when you have 1000 applicants for one job.
- The point behind certification efforts is generally to "grow the
pool of Perl programmers". The logic is that a rising tide lifts
all ships: more jobs for entry level programmers, more jobs for
gurus, and so on. However:
- there is no demonstrable evidence that there is a mass of
programmers ready to use Perl, if only there were a
certification they could get
- there is no demonstrable evidence that there is a pool of
employers that do not use Perl simply because there are no
certified applicants
- there is no demonstrable evidence that simply offering
"certification" will answer the questions hiring managers will
ask
- Many Perl trainers are vehemently anti-certification. A
certification without a supporting training curriculum is dead in
the water.
- Sure, they could turn around, and sure, other trainers are just
as vehemently pro-certification. But this difference of opinion
should be resolved before any certification effort moves
forward, and it's been a complete logjam for years.
- Lots of programmers have a whole litany of excuses as to why they
avoid using Perl. Ugly code is one. Excessive use of punctuation
is another. Impenetrable regular expressions a third. "Odd" OOP
practices a fourth. And so on. Lack of certification options is
almost never a reason for programmers to not use Perl.
- Another reason why Perl is a minority language is that it's not
used in academic curricula. Certification will not solve that
problem, either. We'll still have a glut of VB, Java and C#
programmers after a certification is done.
- One reason why many shops avoid Perl is the lack of vendor
support. Certification does nothing to address this.
- Even with a certification program, the underlying problems with
Perl still need to be addressed: mod_perl is too hard to manage in
many situations, applications like RT take entirely too much work
to install, and so on. [1]
> > At the end of the day, all that matters is "can you get the job done?"
>
> Maybe that was the problem you are trying to solve.
Yep. Perl is a programming language. I use it to automate my daily
tedium, and solve problems for my clients and employers.
> The problem I was trying to solve was how do you
> get wider acceptance of perl?
You can try to solve that problem with certification. I wish you loads
of luck, though. The last time Perl had an upsurge in popularity, it
was because Perl solved a new class of problem better than anything
else. Might I suggest that the best way to increase adoption is to
learn from our past successes instead of admiring the green fields in
Redmond or Santa Clara?
Z.
[1]: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/6572
_______________________________________________
Boston-pm mailing list
[email protected]
http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
