Adam Turoff wrote:
You do not entertain the possibility that certification could
possibly be bad and do damage to the community...
It hasn't hurt Linux.
Now there's an open source project that has had extreme success in
moving into the enterprise, while still retaining the hacker community.
The two can co-exist.
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:
There's very little down side to trying a certification program (unless
you buy Adam's opening argument above). Just some time and perhaps a bit
of money. It might even be fairly low effort if someone can convince one
of the existing certification organizations that are already dealing in
open source-related certifications, such as the companies that provide
Linux certifications, to offer a Perl certification.
As others have argued on the list, as programmers we know certifications
are pointless as a technical qualification, but we're not the audience
that needs to be convinced otherwise.
The point is, if you think certifications are a good idea, then start
working on it. There's no need to develop a community consensus. Once it
is made available, you'll find out soon enough if there is enough
programmer and employee interest to sustain it.
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
Adam raises some good points here.
My theory is that certifications provide the "icing on the cake" in
already healthy industries. The articles that I recall reading about
certifications in the IT press say that they result in increased salary
(a few grand) for those who have them, but are rarely used as a deciding
factor in hiring. (That was probably 5+ years ago when certifications
were first rising in popularity. I haven't looked into the topic more
recently.)
On the programmer side of things, I don't think too many new programmers
are dismissing Perl because a certification isn't available. They're
looking at job postings, which tell the whole story from their perspective.
On the employer side, there are a whole bunch of factors, from the
reputation Perl has developed, to the quantity (or perceived quantity)
of programmers available. If those two factors don't change,
certifications aren't going to reverse the trend.
It would be worth studying how certification for Linux has worked as an
advocacy tool. My expectation is that you'll find that Linux had already
cleared all the other barriers (lots of people and an abundance of
glowing IT press), and certification just provided the "warm and fuzzy"
comfort for mainstream (with respect to the technology adoption curve)
hiring managers.
So I think Adam has it right that certification isn't the answer to
Perl's problems, but that's not a sufficient argument against trying
certification. After all, "there more than one way to do things."
Perhaps certification will turn out to be an unexpectedly useful tool
for advocacy.
-Tom
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