Stephan Kämper wrote:
Patrick Hurley 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.
Well, I second that. And here's why: I always thought that nearly everywhere in the world (outside the very notable exception of Germany, and less notable probably a few other countries) you're not evaluated by certificates, school (and university) reports and paper work like that, but your actual proficiency and professionalism. As in: "Real World" work you have done, or at least interviews which aren't superficial but go down to a real technical level.
Lack of certification in many instances means there will not be an interview. Some people whine about that fact. I say that if there *is* a Ruby or Rails certificate, it must be as comprehensive as the Microsoft, Cisco or Red Hat certifications.
I had one single interview like that - and I have to say that this was the best one I had. Ever. (As it was back in the mediaeval times, and thus we discussed about the blessings and the dangers of mutiple inheritance, the C++ STL, and runtime vs. compile-time polymorphism.)
How did that work out for you and for the employer? What were the business results?
Anyway, I think certificates certify that you're capable of getting the certificate. While most don't say much about your problem solving abilities, endurance, patience, abstract thinking and whatever else may be important in the job at hand.
For some definition of "most", this could be true. In the case of Microsoft, Cisco and Red Hat, in my opinion it is emphatically *not* true -- the certificate is an excellent indicator of the certified person's abilities to produce consistent business results in the area covered.
But since we're talking about development (Ruby/Rails) rather than system administration positions, let's narrow this down to the Microsoft MCSD exams. I haven't browsed the Microsoft criteria and course list recently, but I work with people who have these certificates and believe they have value.
Finally, let's talk about a typical hiring cycle in a medium to large development project. First of all, when the project begins, most of the people on it will already be employed in the company and be known quantities. It's rare that people will need to be hired from outside, and every effort will be made to limit the number of outside hires required.
But let's assume that the project management has justified the new hires. There will be a job posting. Let's say it's a Microsoft project, and let's say they are using Windows Server 2003, SQL Server 2005, ASP.NET, IIS and C# -- the whole Windows stack, analogous to, say, Linux/Apache-Mongrel/MySQL-PostgreSQL/Ruby-Rails. I would *insist* that *every* new hire be certified in the technology that the position would use. No certificate -- no interview. That would most likely get me at least five qualified applicants for each position.
Now in the interview process, I want to know what *you* did that you got *paid* for. I don't want to debate my choice of SQL Server 2005 vs. your preference for PostgreSQL. I don't want to hear you whine about C# and having to declare variables. I don't want to hear about all the fun stuff you did with Linux on your Athlon Thunderbird nights and weekends. I short, I want to know if you can carry out assignments and deliver business results.
So by my analogy, were I starting a medium to large Rails project -- to make things easy, let's assume I'm using Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Oracle, for which I can hire vendor-certified folks. I'm going to plead ignorance on the Apache front -- I don't know if there are Apache certifications. There sure as hell ought to be -- it's a complicated beast with lots of options. 
What would I want from a Ruby/Rails certified new hire?
Same thing as I want for an ASP.NET/C# certified person. I want to know you can carry out assignments and deliver business results. At a minimum, I'd want you to have down cold everything in the Pickaxe book, everything in AWDR, and everything in "Ruby for Rails".
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On 11/10/06, Gustav Paul <gustav@rails.co.za> wrote:
