Cory Petkovsek wrote:
> I went through 5/6ths of the way for an mcse. One more test and I could
> have had it. It didn't mean much any more when Microsoft decided to
> expire them. I'm still interested in certifications, but ones that
> don't expire like comptia's. Those are entry level tests however. Once
> I have a base level I'd like to get some higher level ones that I would
> expect to be regularly tested on every few years.
But...
Technical knowledge becomes obsolete. A certification in old
technology doesn't mean anything. The rule of thumb I work with
is that the half life of technical knowledge is 2 years. I can't
remember where I read that. But there are four factors that
make it so.
First, languages, platforms, applications, and paradigms go in and out
of vogue. If I were designing a computer science program today,
there's no way I'd teach C as anything but a specialty language. But
when I was in school in the early 1980s, C was the spiffy new thing,
and was just starting to replace Fortran. Many people doubted it
would catch on.
Second, even within a single technology, new releases obsolete the old
way of doing things. Perl 4's "local" gave way to Perl 5's "my" and
Perl 5.6's "our".
Third, we really do see a lot of progress in software engineering and
system administration. Object Orientation was a great leap forward.
It took 20 years to become pervasive. Ditto relational databases.
Ditto open source and agile development, though we're only about 5
years into those. If we master these techniques, we write better
software faster than if we stick with assembler and Hollerith cards.
Fifth, Moore's Law. We don't write disk-based sort routines any more.
Suck it all into memory, pipe it through sort(1), and write it all out
again. If it doesn't fit, buy a couple more gigabytes.
You may not see the point, Cory, of me dredging examples out of
ancient history. But that *IS* my point. I'm roughly halfway through
my career, and all the specific technologies I learned at the
beginning are ancient history. Useless. The next 20 years will see
an even faster rate of obsolescense.
I don't see the point of a certification that doesn't expire,
unless it certifies general problem solving skill and engineering
aptitude. We call that certificate a bachelor's degree. (-:
If you want my rant on certification in general, take the last
paragraph and delete the phrase, "that doesn't expire":
I don't see the point of a certification, unless it
certifies general problem solving skill and engineering
aptitude. We call that certificate a bachelor's degree. (-:
--
Bob Miller K<bob>
kbobsoft software consulting
http://kbobsoft.com [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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