Re: Ruby Association Certified Ruby Programmer

On 27 December 2012 16:29, Sean Alphonse <[e-mail]> wrote:

> @Peter Hickman
> Well, I'm not going to spend too much of my time arguing with you but my
> original question was: "How well respected is this certification in the
> industry?" I think all your "basics" are covered by this simple
> question.
>
> Also, here are the purposes of the certification as posted on the cert's
> website:
>
> [Purposes]
> (1) Set a technical-level standard for studying or teaching Ruby
>


For it to be "standard" then everyone (or at least most) people need to be
taking it. I have never met anyone who has taken this test therefore I
cannot say what a score of 87% in this test would mean. There is nothing to
compare it to, there is no way to relate a score against even the most
inexperienced programmer. Given the breadth of the topics and the
shallowness of the testing method, 50 multichoice questions, I would have
no idea what to expect from someone who scored even 100%.

Given that I have interviewed CS graduates from good universities that
could not describe what OOP was without quoting their course notes verbatim
as if they were written ecclesiastical latin and that is after 3 years of
tuition, multiple exams and practical projects I fail to see how 50
multichoice questions will be a better measure.



> (2) Set a standard for Ruby engineers concerning the verification and
> representation of their skill level
>


The depth of the testing, covering 18 topics with only 50 questions, will
reveal nothing about the skills of the participants. It is simply too
shallow.



> (3) Set a decision-making standard for companies and other entities
> concerning the hiring of Ruby engineers (employing or outsourcing
> development work)
>
>
I have been programming since the 80s. I have never, even once, been asked
if I had a certificate to verify my skills. Neither have I required
certification from the candidates who have applied for positions that we
have interviewed for. The only people that we have ever employed that
needed to verify their skills were accountants and first-aiders. The only
things that matter for a programmer is experience and if you are familier
with Java, C and Perl you should have enough experience to
make learning another programming language nothing more than a weekend
project.



> I think all these reasons are valid and it's backed by an "official"
> association. How well it does these things, even though it's official,
> is what I'm seeking knowledge of.
>

Certification is a waste of time and will not help you get a job as a Ruby
or Rails developer.


>
> Well, I'm going to go back to working on some XML and ruby. Thank you
> for your time.
>
> Also, yes Ruby and Perl are very similar, being that their both
> scripting languages (though they do have differences). I'm interested in
> becoming not just a ruby developer, but also a rails developer. And
> there's really nothing quite like Rails in Java and Perl..
>
>

HTML::Mason is similar and Cocoon has some interesting ideas (although
burdened with the typical Java over engineering).



> --
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
>
>