I think I just figured out why this conversation is going nowhere. The pro-certification folks think that certification would help convince a non-technical manager to use perl for a project. The programmers would determine that perl is the right language for the job on a technical basis. The manager would use a oijia board and certification to determine that perl is the best language to use for the job. And everyone would be happy.
It's a very specific condition. Programmers determine perl is the best technical language for job. Manager needs some non-technical convincing. Certification convinces manager. Everyone is happy. Rather than address this rather specific situation, however, the anti-certification folks, denounce certification as communist (red scare anyone?), spread fears of total bifurcation of the entire Perl community, and warn of the zombie army of braindead programmers with Perl Certificates taking over the job market. It's Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt at it's finest. You guys got Bill Gates and his Linux FUD beat hands down. How exactly did logic get thrown out the window with this? Perl certification won't find Bin Laden, so we shouldn't adopt it? Every person capable of running a perl training course is against certification, so there will be no way we can ever get anyone to teach a perl certification course? Cats and dogs will be sleeping together, the end of the world as we know it? Come on, people. You've been trained to think logically. You all know the difference between empirical evidence and wild speculation, between hypothosis and scientific law. What the hell happened here? How'd we get from Perl-Certification-Manager-Accepts-Perl to the four horsemen of the friggen apocolypse??? It doesn't parse. Just a refresher to those who were busy doing assembly programming during their logic courses: The person making the assertion is shouldered with the burden of evidence. That means if you make a claim like "The perl community will split in two if certification is adopted", then it is up to you to provide the evidence and proof to support that assertion. Otherwise it is nothing but FUD. Simply saying it will split doesn't make it true. and starting with it as a premise is a logical error. The only assertion I've made in favor of certification is that a manager who doesn't use the technical aspects of the languages to choose which language to use might be persuaded in favor of perl if perl certification were available. This seems to be true. It certainly seems safe to say that perl certification won't cause a manager to NOT choose perl. Therefore certification is at WORST, no worse than it is now, at best an encouragement for managers to select perl. This is a logically sound argument. I am interested in hearing any logically sound arguments against certification, because I'm aware that I may have missed something. Many eyes make all bugs shallow, and that sort of thing. But if you're not making a logical argument, then all you're doing is spreading FUD. All I've heard so far is logically equivalent to saying "Hitler required certification", and then the pro-certification folks get sucked into discussions of Nazism, when the whole thing is just a bunch of bullshit/FUD to stand as an obstruction to certification. Stopping certification at any cost, including sacrificing logic and an honest approach to the facts. To what end honestly, I don't know. Perhaps, you think of perl as you ultimate hacker's dream, unencumbered by the realities of politics, managerial decisions, and non-technical stuff like certification. I don't know. But it's clear to me that what happened on this list would happen on a larger scale if certification were discussed at a national level. And that made me realize that I just don't have the energy to deal with that scale of bullshit, that enormous level of FUD, on the order of possibly tens of thousands of otherwise logical-thinking programmers suddenly succumbing to the fear that maybe the Earth isn't flat, maybe the Earth isn't at the center of the universe, and rather than look through someone's telescope, would rather fool themselves with smoke and mirrors that they would on any other occaision recognize instantly as a pile of stinking manure. Just thinking about it makes me tired. And so I withdraw, at least until as such a time that someone actually wants to engage in a logical discussion about certification. But I'm done trying to convince the unconvincible. I'm done trying to apply logic to the illogical. I'm done trying to move the immovable. Anyone who is vehement anything refuses to look through the telescope. _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list [email protected] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
