Ruby Certification Test

Ruby
21

I hold a number of language certifications and none will make you a
programmer.

However, that said, IMO certification does force a “programmer” to study
corners of the language he might not have been used before. Many times
I’ve had an “Ah Haw” while looking at something that did not relate to
my daily programming needs.

So, certifications have value, and if a Ruby cert becomes available I
will probably STUDY and set for the exam.

Will it make me a better programmer? Maybe…

However, in the USA, certification hasn’t been positive or negative for
me from a job search perspective.

Or, maybe it was negative on some of those interviews where I didn’t get
hired:-)

Bill

22

Jay L. wrote:

I do like the opportunity to point out a great quote by Steve Yegge:

“Certification is for the weak. It’s something that flags you as a
technician when you really want to be an engineer. If you want to be a
television repairman, you can become certified in TV repair. If you want to
work for Sony and design their next big-screen TV, then you clearly don’t
need a busy-working-adults course on how to repair the fugging things.”

Stevey's Blog Rants: Ten Tips for a (Slightly) Less Awful Resume

I have very little respect for Steve Yegge. He comes across as arrogant,
especially in his postings on “employment culture,” and his
pronouncements on programming languages are less valuable to me than
most of the trolls on that subject in Ruby-Talk. :slight_smile: YMMV, etc., but
somehow I think I’d rather have a Ruby certification than a snotty
comment from Steve Yegge. But I think I want to get my Forth
certification first. :slight_smile:

23

When we interview the only qualification that is acceptable as a
substitute for experience is a degree, and then only from a recent
graduate. Otherwise you will need to show some experience, preferably
contribution to some project so that we can examine your code in the
wild (you do document, comment and test your code don’t you?) If all
you can show is ‘certification’ your CV will get binned.

Honestly, what do you expect? Certificates are for school sports day to
make little children feel good about themselves, they will not make up
for experience.

24

On 10/24/07, Peter H. [email protected] wrote:

When we interview the only qualification that is acceptable as a
substitute for experience is a degree, and then only from a recent
graduate. Otherwise you will need to show some experience, preferably
contribution to some project so that we can examine your code in the
wild (you do document, comment and test your code don’t you?)
No, No, Yes
The first No is a problem and I try to document my code a little bit
after I have released it, but I shall document it much more. We are
talking Class, Module and Traits :wink: level here, right?
The second No is a Must, I’d rather rewrite my code than to comment it.
If you cannot read one of my methods I have to rewrite it, not to
comment it!
Actually I have to rewrite a lot of code, I know :(.
Well at least we agree about the tests, I feel BTW much more need to
comment my tests, seems to be a problem with my test code.

Cheers
Robert

25

On Wed, 24 Oct 2007 23:30:54 +0900, John J. wrote:

Actually, that’s a horrible quote. The Japanese engineers who design
TVs and LCD monitors are full of certs and ISOs and stuff. One of my
in-laws is one of them.

Well, I, uh, meant a “great quote” in that I knew when I posted it, I
would
learn some very interesting facts about how wrong it was. Yeah.

26

On Thu, 25 Oct 2007 01:49:07 +0900, Giles B. wrote:

My existing certifications are in Java, XML, and
hypnotherapy (from the most stringent hypnosis certification program
there is)

Once you got the third, couldn’t you just make people think that you’ve
shown them the other two?

Sorry, weak joke, I know, no sleep.

27

I went and got two certifications. I’m actually planning to get a
couple more. My existing certifications are in Java, XML, and
hypnotherapy (from the most stringent hypnosis certification program
there is). The certifications I’m planning are in Final Cut Studio Pro
and Adobe After Effects. I’m going to look into getting side work on
weekends doing editing and motion graphics. A certification’s less
valuable than actual work experience, but more valuable than nothing.

I think the real reason for hostility against certifications has
absolutely nothing to do with their usefulness or non-usefulness. I
think they’re useful, although less authoritative than they claim to
be. I think the reason people hate certifications is that an attempt
to be authoritative implies an attempt to be an authority, and for a
big fat beauraucracy to assert authority over independent programmers
is total BS. People who think it’s offensive BS hate
certifications. I think it’s funny BS, so I get them anyway, every
once in a while.

There is a third group of people, who don’t think certifications
are BS. I think those people are wrong, and if there are more of them
on this list than in the past, that’s probably a consequence of Ruby
becoming more mainstream, but I still think certifications are useful,
especially if they make you study and they ask difficult questions. If
it makes you learn the language in detail, it can be good. It was over
a year after getting my XML certification that I actually used XPath
in a real-life work situation, but when that time came, I did it from
memory with no problems at all. It was all still in there.

The number one reason I liked Rails when I first saw it is because I
had looked into getting a J2EE/JSP certification. They make you learn
all of the JSP APIs, and it’s like this archaeological dig. You go
down a layer, there’s a terrible API that you wouldn’t be able to use
in real life. You go down another layer, there’s an even worse API
that you wouldn’t be able to use in real life for the same reasons,
plus additional reasons. Then you do it all again. There’s this whole
sequence of terrible APIs stacked on top of each other, where Sun came
up with something, it sucked, and then they came up with something
completely different instead, which sucked only slightly less, but
still continued supporting the earlier thing, because they couldn’t
admit it sucked, and they had customers on it. And the funny part is,
you don’t just have to learn all these crap APIs. You also have to
learn Sun’s excuses for them. I’m serious. Those are questions on the
exam.

As long as you actually think about what you’re reading, studying for
the JSP cert is an incredible education in how to fuck up Web APIs
really, really badly.

(I think I’ll blog this.)

–
Giles B.

Blog: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com
Portfolio: http://www.gilesgoatboy.org
Tumblelog: http://giles.tumblr.com/

28

My existing certifications are in Java, XML, and
hypnotherapy (from the most stringent hypnosis certification program
there is)

Once you got the third, couldn’t you just make people think that you’ve
shown them the other two?

Sorry, weak joke, I know, no sleep.

No sleep??? But than Gilles can help you :slight_smile:

You are getting sleepy…

–
Giles B.

Blog: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com
Portfolio: http://www.gilesgoatboy.org
Tumblelog: http://giles.tumblr.com/

29

On 10/24/07, Giles B. [email protected] wrote:

You are getting sleepy…

No, not me it was h…

30

On 10/24/07, Jay L. [email protected] wrote:

No sleep??? But than Gilles can help you :slight_smile:
R.

31

The real reason certifications are weak is because they tend to only
test encyclopedic knowledge.
The test and its backing research is what determines the value of the
test.
Good testing will define what the test can determine.
A good programming test would simply include analysis, design, and
bugstomping.
This is a language test that simply tests your understanding of the
grammar, usage, and vocabulary of the language.
Most tests of any topic avoid subjective parts because it is
difficult to apply metrics to them accurately or meaningfully.
That’s not bad, just incomplete.

These tests are good in that they check knowledge of the details of a
subject. They don’t test your skill at applying the knowledge.

I support the idea of certification/testing if it the testing is
understood for what it is.
We all know that A+ certs don’t mean you are good at troubleshooting
hardware, because the test doesn’t actually physically involve
hardware or software!
I’ve been to good interviews where they created a battery of
activities using real software and hardware with only you and a clock
to figure out what’s wrong. It was a good test. The only measure of
success or failure was you versus yourself, the clock and compared
with the other participants.

We’ll see what the Ruby test turns out to be like. I have high hopes
for it though. The language designers have integrity and are not
doing any of this to get rich, just to promote and validate their
creation, it’s a fairly natural step. And if nothing else, the fee
money will certainly go towards a cause we can all appreciate… Ruby!

32

On 10/24/07, John J. [email protected] wrote:

We’ll see what the Ruby test turns out to be like. I have high hopes
for it though. The language designers have integrity and are not
doing any of this to get rich, just to promote and validate their
creation, it’s a fairly natural step. And if nothing else, the fee
money will certainly go towards a cause we can all appreciate… Ruby!
Well Ruby has been proven to be different in so many ways, maybe it
will here to.
I remain skeptical before I see it though.

R.

33

John J. wrote:

The real reason certifications are weak is because they tend to only
test encyclopedic knowledge.

There is another reason that is more soft and perhaps much more
important. Certification is made to encyclopedically register one as a
professional commodity for large profittaking enterprises, most of the
likes of which are better organized as public utilities with extensive
public oversight rather than as private enterprises. If we had real
free market the drive would be toward a more rich professional community
that knew itself more extensively rather than just registering people as
items in databases and playing lotto with their lives. Real free market
does work if you don’t short-circuit it with corporate oligarchy like we
have in the U.S. I think the Engineering community could use more small
private concerns, and let the M$ and the Sun Corps become public
utilities with mandatory and well subsidized public oversight. Of
course that will work better if you get everyone to stop making cars and
start working for only 20/hours a week in their day jobs.

xc

34

Bill Plummer wrote:

Or, maybe it was negative on some of those interviews where I didn’t get
hired:-)

Think of all the people who didn’t get interviewed because they weren’t
certified. :slight_smile:

35

Xeno C. wrote:

private concerns, and let the M$ and the Sun Corps become public
utilities with mandatory and well subsidized public oversight. Of
course that will work better if you get everyone to stop making cars and
start working for only 20/hours a week in their day jobs.

plonk

36

On 10/24/07, Xeno C. [email protected] wrote:

that knew itself more extensively rather than just registering people as
items in databases and playing lotto with their lives. Real free market
does work if you don’t short-circuit it with corporate oligarchy like we
have in the U.S. I think the Engineering community could use more small
private concerns, and let the M$ and the Sun Corps become public
utilities with mandatory and well subsidized public oversight. Of
course that will work better if you get everyone to stop making cars and
start working for only 20/hours a week in their day jobs.

Wow!!

37

We’ll see what the Ruby test turns out to be like. I have high hopes
for it though. The language designers have integrity and are not
doing any of this to get rich, just to promote and validate their
creation, it’s a fairly natural step. And if nothing else, the fee
money will certainly go towards a cause we can all appreciate… Ruby!

Well Ruby has been proven to be different in so many ways, maybe it
will here to.
I remain skeptical before I see it though.

I think the point about it being a Japanese certification is a very
valid point. AFAIK Japanese society is a bit more serious about those
things. Technical certs I like as educational experiences (yadda yadda
yadda previous post etc.) but there isn’t really anything in place to
make the system honest, at least not over here on the Western half of
the globe.

–
Giles B.

Blog: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com
Portfolio: http://www.gilesgoatboy.org
Tumblelog: http://giles.tumblr.com/

38

private concerns, and let the M$ and the Sun Corps become public
utilities with mandatory and well subsidized public oversight. Of
course that will work better if you get everyone to stop making cars and
start working for only 20/hours a week in their day jobs.

Wow!!

I would be down with only working 20 hours a week. I’d question the
rest of it, though.

–
Giles B.

Blog: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com
Portfolio: http://www.gilesgoatboy.org
Tumblelog: http://giles.tumblr.com/

39

On 25/10/2007, Giles B. [email protected] wrote:

I would be down with only working 20 hours a week. I’d question the
rest of it, though.

Around here it’s almost impossible to earn a living working 20
hours/week. Either they pay high but expect you to work almost 24/7 or
they pay so low that you have to work almost 24/7. Positions where you
get anything else are quite rare.

Yet most of the useful work is done in China almost for free so most
of the stuff people do here for living is useless nonsense. Yay, the
awesome free market.

Thanks

Michal