Ruby certification

Ruby
41

Austin Z. wrote:

Even with your cert, it doesn’t
mean anything_real until it’s clear that you were learning from
one of the preeminent voices about Ruby.

Certs, by and large, are scams. That’s not to say that there aren’t
good processes and programs, but those speak to the quality of the
programs, not the pieces of paper you get from them.

So far I am getting a lot and I am glad I am enrolled in the program.
I’ll let you know after I post my project / gem and then you can decide
if I’ve learned anything :slight_smile: .

Cheers,
Jim

42

On Dec 11, 2007, at 02:55 , Mark W. wrote:

Interviewer: “What can you tell me about the OSI?”
Interviewer: “What’s OOP”
Interviewer: “What languages have you used?”
(See a trend yet ;-))
Interviewer: “What Operating systems are you familar with?”

Uni teaches a lot of theory, but unless you’re working in the industry
that’s all it is… theory! I’m actually working in IT now but I
wasn’t for the first 8 years of the degree.

I’ve been trying to avoid this thread but this one pissed me off…

Education at any and all levels is what you make of it. The trend I
saw across all of your examples is that you wasted your time and
didn’t learn very much. I worked my butt off and left proficient in
imperative programming (pascal, modula-2 C), object oriented
programming (esp smalltalk but also C++), formal language theory so I
could build my own languages, build tools like make, and a lot more.
That was what I was interested in and that is what I pushed myself on.

We had another group lecture us on OSI so I know they left school
proficient on the networking side. Indeed, two of them went on to work
for speakeasy, another went to amazon and worked on the network
security team.

OSI wasn’t my bag so I listened to the lecture and moved on. If you
leave college with a CS degree and you aren’t hire-able, it is
nobody’s fault but your own.

This is just as true for certificate programs as it is for undergrad,
high school, whatever. You get out of it what you make of it.

43

Mark W. wrote:

Interviewer: “What languages have you used?”
Me: “Java/J2EE, Perl, PHP, javascript, C, C++, Ruby”
Interviewer: “That’s good. How would you rate your level of expertise
in these languages”
Me: “um … beginner in all of them”
Interviewer: “Is it time for coffee?”

Well in this area at least it is possible to improve yourself, as a Perl
programmer do you have any modules on CPAN that sound useful and are
being used or that you are contributing to. Same goes for all the other
languages. I got a job as a web developer after submitting my Perl code
for genetic algorithms (which incidentally still hasn’t made it onto
CPAN).

With a little mercenary attitude you could join an existing project and
start to make some contributions, starting small with writing docs,
testing and patching bugs. There are some companies that will be quite
impressed with this. Do not underestimate how good contributing to an
open source project can look on your CV. If nothing it gives the
interviewer something to ask you questions about to get a handle on what
type of person you are.

But I must stress the mercenary aspect here, it is better to be a small
fish in a big pool than a big fish in a small pool. Helping out on the
Cocoon project even if you barely get name checked is better than being
head honcho of some wannabe me too web framework.

And even after you get the job it still pays, in terms of your CV, to
keep contributing to open source projects.

44

Hi Ryan,

On Dec 12, 7:03 am, Ryan D. [email protected] wrote:

I’ve been trying to avoid this thread but this one pissed me off…

That obviously wasn’t the intention.

Education at any and all levels is what you make of it.

If you reread my post I pretty much said the same thing:

“One thing I will say about the whole Cert/Uni thing though is it
depends on the person. Like somebody else said, you could sleep
through a course, barely pass the exam, and forget it the next day.
Or you could use it as a springboard to go further.”

The trend I saw across all of your examples is that you wasted your
time and didn’t learn very much.

I’m looking (hopefully) at a distinction average, so I must have
learnt
something.
The trend I saw in my examples is that I learnt a little about many
different topics, but wouldn’t say I’m ‘proficient’ in any of them.
Now maybe I learnt more, and I’m more ‘proficient’ than I give
myself
credit for. Hence the:

"I do though find myself thinking "oh, that's what the lecturer
 was trying to get across" at times."

I worked my butt off and left proficient in
imperative programming (pascal, modula-2 C), object oriented
programming (esp smalltalk but also C++), formal language theory so I
could build my own languages, build tools like make, and a lot more.
That was what I was interested in and that is what I pushed myself on.

If you leave college with a CS degree and you aren’t hire-able, it is
nobody’s fault but your own.

Probably! I was hire-able before I left Uni based on academic
record.
Again, my intention wasn’t to dismiss the degree as irrelevent. It
certainly was relevent.

If I had to sum up what I was trying to say above, it would be that
Uni
provided a broad base, but now I need/want to target specific areas
of
interest to a level where I’d consider myself proficient!

cheers,

45

On Tue, 11 Dec 2007 01:59:32 -0500
Chad P. [email protected] wrote:

make you actually good, at least judging by the results I’ve seen.

It seems most CS degree programs are just (really long, really
expensive) Java certification courses, these days.

OK, I’ll bite :wink:
As someone who has just completed a degree I’m afraid I’ll have to
agree with you Chad. I look back on what I’ve actually learnt over the
past 10 years (that right! 10. I’ve been doing it part time through
distance education as well as getting married, having 2 kids, 3 jobs, 2
states, 3 houses…) and if I had to summarize I’d say it taught me a
little about many things, but not a lot of anything in particular!

Interviewer: “What can you tell me about the OSI?”
Me: “Open Systems Interconnect, 7 layers, blah blah”
Interviewer: “Good”
Interviewer: “Have you ever administered a network before?”
Me: “ar… no”
Interviewer: “mmm”

Interviewer: “What’s OOP”
Me: “Object Oriented Programming, classes, instances, inheritance,
polymorphism… ramble, ramble, ramble”
Interviewer: “What projects have you worked on that involved OOP?”
Me: “um … none”
Interviewer: “mmm”

Interviewer: “What languages have you used?”
Me: “Java/J2EE, Perl, PHP, javascript, C, C++, Ruby”
Interviewer: “That’s good. How would you rate your level of expertise
in these languages”
Me: “um … beginner in all of them”
Interviewer: “Is it time for coffee?”

(See a trend yet ;-))

Interviewer: “What Operating systems are you familar with?”
Me: “Windows 95/Me/2000/XP, Linux/Unix”
Interviewer: “Good, so what does ‘make >& make.output &’ do then?”
Me: “ar … uses make …”
Interviewer: “Ar … so you know about ‘make’ then?”
Me: “well, I’ve heard of it” (Sinks into chair)
Interviewer: “mmm, go on…”
Me: “I’m not getting this job, am I?”
Interviewer: “um … no!”

Uni teaches a lot of theory, but unless you’re working in the industry
that’s all it is… theory! I’m actually working in IT now but I
wasn’t for the first 8 years of the degree.

Now that I’ve finished, it’s time to actually learn something beyond an
introductory level. I’m not saying the degree wasn’t beneficial. It was.
But I would say there was a lot of ‘fluff’. I do though find myself
thinking “oh, that’s what the lecturer was trying to get across” at
times.

One thing I will say about the whole Cert/Uni thing though is it
depends on the person. Like somebody else said, you could sleep through
a course, barely pass the exam, and forget it the next day. Or you
could use it as a springboard to go further. Would I do another
Cert/degree? Nope! Hopefully I’ll get to a point where I’ll be of some
use to an open source project. I think that would definitely be the way
to go.

cheers,

46

On 12/11/07, Chad P. [email protected] wrote:

On Tue, Dec 11, 2007 at 02:09:37PM +0900, Austin Z. wrote:

Ultimately, the problem is one of wishes and horses. It may differ in
the rest of the world, but certificates in the U.S. and Canada are
essentially worthless, and it’s greedy vendors’ fault in large part.
Sorry.
I tend to agree, to some extent at least. I’m surprised, though, that
you didn’t address the matter of how a CS degree is characterized here.

Mostly because I avoid talking about CS degrees in general. :expressionless:

Computer Science degrees are not supposed to indicate a basic ability to
program – computer science as a field is something else entirely. It is
as though everyone expects a CS degree to be the definitive programming
certification. Of course, because that’s how it is treated in the job
market, schools have started chasing that in how they structure their CS
degree programs, with the end result that they end up being about as
worthless as vendor-driven certifications. Oh, sure, they make you
look good, but they don’t make you actually good, at least judging by
the results I’ve seen.

Damn straight, and that’s completely wrong. That said, a computer
science degree should present both theory and practice together in a
way that does prepare you for the workforce. The student I had for
this year’s Summer of Code was really good: knew his theory, knew his
programming. He’d never had a code review even in the co-op positions,
and that’s a lot of what I did for him this summer. A computer science
degree should expose you to a lot of different programming languages
because they affect the way that you think about problems.

It seems most CS degree programs are just (really long, really expensive)
Java certification courses, these days.

Not just these days. There are a few schools that I actually care
about the CS program from. Otherwise, I see a CS degree as a checkbox:
willing to complete things to other peoples’ standards. I have very
particular ideas about what a good liberal arts education should be,
and I think most university and college degrees should be good liberal
arts educations. Too many CS departments spend too much time worrying
about vendor specific details and not enough worrying about theory and
practice. Some CS departments spend too much time worrying about
theory and almost nothing about practice. You must have both. And
almost no CS department spends any time worrying about interpersonal
communication and writing skills. Those skills will far outlast almost
any other skill you will learn in all of CS. Programming languages
come and go (anyone really use REXX these days, great language that it
was?); ways of thinking and organizing and communicating will
last.

Still, it reinforces my point: your certificate is going to have value
because of who is mentoring you during the process. NOT because it’s a
piece of paper. I’d still feel more comfortable hiring someone with a
visible reputation of open source contributions. It’s not the piece of
paper (the certification) that has value; it’s the process. If that
process changes, the value evaporates.
Spot-on, I think, with the exception that it’s not reputation that makes
the mentor – though certain types of reputation are strong indicators.

Well, it’s the mentor that makes the reputation, obviously. However,
that reputation precedes or often has to stand in for the mentor.

tool: if they advertise their programs as certification training
programs, they’re more likely to get students clamoring at their doors,
assuming the certs in question are in any demand.

Oh, you’re absolutely right. It’s a vicious circle, mostly because of
the people (employers and employees) who demand certification. I think
that I’ve got a couple of “certs” for completing some RUP University
classes (ha!). Needless to say, I don’t report on the certs on my
resume ever. I have said that I’ve got experience and training in RUP.

needed for the degrees I pursued, even when I was getting As on
everything. Learning is something you do, not something you receive.

The primary goal of school—at any level—should be to provide you with
the tools you need to acquire more knowledge on your own. Most of that
will be through constructive criticism (although many people fail at
the constructive part). Teachers can’t teach you anything; they can
only give you the opportunities you need to learn. By example, they
also help you learn the tools you need to learn more and hopefully get
a passion for learning. Maybe even a passion for one or more topics.

-austin

47

On 12/11/07, Peter H. [email protected] wrote:

Mark W. wrote:
Well in this area at least it is possible to improve yourself, as a Perl
programmer do you have any modules on CPAN that sound useful and are
being used or that you are contributing to. Same goes for all the other
languages. I got a job as a web developer after submitting my Perl code
for genetic algorithms (which incidentally still hasn’t made it onto
CPAN).

Spot on.

And I understand that Greg and Michael are more than welcome to have
helpers on PDF::Writer :wink:

-austin

48

On Wed, Dec 12, 2007 at 05:03:00AM +0900, Ryan D. wrote:

Education at any and all levels is what you make of it. The trend I
saw across all of your examples is that you wasted your time and
didn’t learn very much.

That’s a gross generalization – such a sweeping generalization that it
entirely leaves the realm of accuracy. At least three people here
(including me) made the point that while it seems most instructors don’t
really teach anything effectively, and don’t much teach what the
certificate or degree program promises, individual effort can more than
make up for the deficiencies of the classes.

That was what I was interested in and that is what I pushed myself on.

. . . which just reinforces the point about individual effort.

49

helpers on PDF::Writer :wink:
Plus one. I think it’s a lot easier to find work with successful open
source code than a degree. There’s a kind of ceiling to what you can
achieve without studying computer science, but you can study computer
science on Wikipedia and beat that ceiling for free.

I wouldn’t knock cramming for exams, though. I got XML certified and
didn’t need to use XPath until a year after the exam. I wrote up a
pseudocode sketch because I didn’t think I remembered the syntax
exactly, but I did remember it exactly - my pseudocode ran
perfectly, first time, no bugs. I figured I was going to sketch it,
then turn it into something which worked, but it worked as written.
The cert itself was a pretty silly waste of money, but the experience
was very valuable. If you work hard to remember something, you’ll
remember it. Certifications are useless for someone like me but the
process of getting one was very valuable. I guarantee you, if the
Pragmatic Studio gave an Idiomatic Ruby cert, it would be worth
getting, whether you ever put it on your resume or not.

–
Giles B.

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

50

On Fri, Dec 14, 2007 at 02:20:24PM +0900, Giles B. wrote:

helpers on PDF::Writer :wink:

Plus one. I think it’s a lot easier to find work with successful open
source code than a degree. There’s a kind of ceiling to what you can
achieve without studying computer science, but you can study computer
science on Wikipedia and beat that ceiling for free.

There’s a lot of information on Wikipedia, but information isn’t
knowledge.
Presentation of information in a curriculum is more than just the body
of
information, and (going back to an education being what you make of it)
you
can’t go to Wikipedia’s office hours and ask it a question. At least
part
of the reason for paying for an undergraduate education is the face to
face
time with experts in their fields.

Pragmatic Studio gave an Idiomatic Ruby cert, it would be worth
getting, whether you ever put it on your resume or not.

…which all reinforces the idea that training can be valuable, even if
the
piece of paper and resume line item is useless or worse.

Giles B.
–Greg

51

Hi everybody,

I need some details about just online exams. I will prepare by my own
but i need some certification exam which is accepted by most of the
software exams globally. just like SCJP, Red hat etc. Just prepare by
your own and write exams online.

Is there any free exams for ruby online just like brainbenceh
certification?

That was what I was interested in and that is what I pushed myself on.

. . . which just reinforces the point about individual effort.