From: Gregory Brown <gregory.t.brown@...>
Date: 2006-11-11T07:53:38+09:00
Subject: Re: looking for some feedback about Certification

On 11/10/06, Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@path.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> Patrick Hurley wrote:
> > On 11/10/06, Gustav Paul <gustav@rails.co.za> wrote:
> >> pat eyler wrote:
> >> >  1) Is Ruby ready for/in need of a certification program?
> >
> > With the growing size of the Ruby community (and demand for Ruby
> > programmers) there will undoubtedly be programs of this sort. Of
> > course having said that, I personally consider certifications programs
> > (especially for programming languages) one of the worst hiring metrics
> > available. If you want to find a good programmer, looking for a
> > language specific certificate is a terrible mistake.
>
> What about assigning each student to make contributions to ruby and to
> the community, so that they have something concrete and visible to point
> to? For example:
>
> - write std lib docs
>
> - write tests for std libs
>
> - write a brief article or blog entry, with newbies in mind as the readers
>
> - contact a project maintainer (on rubyforge for example) and ask for a
> suitable task (not SoC level, but not trivial, either)

I think this sort of metric would be much more meaningful than a
standardized test.  You could call it like a 'practical applications
lab' or something of the like, and make it a requirement for the
course.