From: "James Linden Rose, III" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Mon Feb 28, 2005 5:42:06 PM US/Eastern To: Adam Turoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [Boston.pm] (also) Perl
On Monday, February 28, 2005, at 12:46 PM, Adam Turoff wrote:
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.
I don't believe in this perspective. Why would anyone be "rabidly anti-certification"? That seems terribly irrational. I would call such a person a certifiphobe to his face. How does one person's certification offend some other person who doesn't believe in it? Take their talents where? Where are they fleeing to? Fleeing from what? The train of logic seems to have episodes of being aeronautical. I understand that some may think certification is a waist of time, but how does that offend or discourage that person from upgrading their module?
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 point is that Joe Average Manager ISN'T hiring Perl programmers. Only his elitist cousin, the savvy manager is. How does increasing the number of Perl practitioners reduce the potential talent the manager can hire? The same old self-taught, self proclaimed Perl mongers remain in the job pool as before. The wise and technology savvy manager still uses him. The idiot manager who was hiring Java beans now hires the mediocre Perl plebeian.
- Certification doesn't _prove_ anything. It's mostly a means to
weed out resumes when you have 1000 applicants for one job.
When you go to hire Perl programmers it will mean something. As things are, there are lot of people who claim to be able to use Perl who would have trouble with any level task. Besides, there's a simple substitute for certification that is more impressive... which is show me something you've built with Perl.
- 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
This is a strawman argument. There is no mass of programmers ready to use Perl because there is no educational forum available to learn and prove that you have learned the language. Would you, without the reward of a college degree, take it upon yourself to study Calculus, Simplex Algorithm, Linear Programming, & Statistics - hoping one day somebody would come to the idea of granting you a BS in mathematics, or would you study these fields knowing that you would receive a degree for your efforts that you could then parley into a job? Without the promise your certificate holds most would not embark on the course of formal study.
- there is no demonstrable evidence that there is a pool of
employers that do not use Perl simply because there are no
certified applicants
I have personal experience that leads me to believe the contrary. Besides, the non-savvy manager is going to ask his "certified" employee for an opinion on what a project should be coded in - and at this time, that employee is not a Perl monger. Perl is at best viewed as a hobby without the magic credentials, in the same way you would be viewed as a smart guy who is nevertheless still too risky to hire if you sat in the library reading for 4 years outside the context of a degree granting institution. This, right or wrong, is just the reality of how our world works, and ignoring this only hurts Perl.
- there is no demonstrable evidence that simply offering
"certification" will answer the questions hiring managers will
ask
But at least the Perl guy will get his chance to field the question.
- Many Perl trainers are vehemently anti-certification. A
certification without a supporting training curriculum is dead in
the water.
I agree. A Perl certificate should come along with a corresponding but optional educational package. Perhaps the certificate can even come with a version number so that later numbers are more valuable than older ones... keep the certification and education constantly improving.
- 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.
Don't follow how the logjam is created or important. Why would such a program require the unanimity of the entire Perl using population of the earth?
- 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.
Don't have any formal training in it is more likely. And I don't see why a programmer would ask himself about his own certification before deciding on what language to use. That's not human nature.
- 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.
Aside from the fact that I think bio-informatics uses it very extensively, put yourself in the position of a university department head. How do you hire a Perl instructor? What certificate is out their to prove that your candidate professor is qualified to teach the subject? And I don't think the goal of certification is to wipe out all other languages from the face of the earth. Nor are academics in the business of training people in technologies for which they will not be hired, and again, certification should ease that problem.
- One reason why many shops avoid Perl is the lack of vendor
support. Certification does nothing to address this.
True. So perhaps the certification process will create the man-power and climate to form companies that can support Perl.
- 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]
I have had zero success in modifying my more complex Perl programs into mod_perl ones. I just wish I had created them as mod_perl from the start. Maybe if I had to attend a certification class I would have been told that before wasting 1,000 man hours.
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