Certification and training courses

[Navin]

Hello,

As a newcomer to ruby and rails (and as someone working on
rejuvenating a career as a programmer) I am trying to establish how
the "Ruby Association Certified Ruby Programmer" accreditation (http://
www.ruby-assn.org/en/certification.htm) is regarded by this
community.

I am taking an online course with rubylearning.org (and finding it to
be somewhat useful) and following Michael Hartl's excellent Rails
Tutorial as he develops it (railstutorial.org) - also working through
the canonical textbooks on the subject ... Thought I would try and get
some feedback before considering the certification further.

Thanks,
Navin

[James Healy]

Navin wrote:
> As a newcomer to ruby and rails (and as someone working on
> rejuvenating a career as a programmer) I am trying to establish how
> the "Ruby Association Certified Ruby Programmer" accreditation (http://
> www.ruby-assn.org/en/certification.htm) is regarded by this
> community.

There was a discussion on this a few months ago [1]. The general
consensus was that certification is a small benefit when applying for
jobs in the Australian ruby community. Most people seem to prefer other
indicators when evaluating potential hires.

-- James Healy <ji...@deefa.com> Sun, 21 Feb 2010 17:47:26 +1100

[1] http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania/browse_thread/thread/abdb545470ef3224

[Ben Schwarz]

You're more likely to get hired if:

You have a github account with projects showing your abilities.
You've spoken at a user group where someone can get an idea of what
you're all about.

Of course, the list goes onwards - certification is pretty low down
the list though

--

> [1]http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania/browse_thread/thread/abd...

[Joshua Partogi]

I asked the same question last year. It seems that Ruby certification
is more favored in Japan and that is why it is created. Unless you
want to work as Ruby programmer in Japan, then this certification is
useless. :-)

Regards,

--
http://twitter.com/scrum8

[Josh Price]

I think the more balanced answer is that it depends on the context.

Like others, I'm generally quite skeptical of certifications as a rule. In your case however, I think a certification may make a lot of sense.

As a newcomer and non-programmer, a certification gives a potential employer some minimum understanding of your skillset. This is especially useful if you happen to be bootstrapping your Ruby career, without any commercial experience.

For a lot of the regulars in the Ruby community and particularly those of us with much more experience, any kind of certification is absolutely useless.

As a community, we are in the interesting position where current demand for Ruby and Rails skills far exceeds supply. Therefore we need to not dismiss the concept of training or certification just because it doesn't suit us in our current position. I believe it is potentially useful for those coming into our industry and community.

Josh

[Ben Schwarz]

Good argument Josh, although I'm far less convinced. I'd look sideways
at anyone who bothered with certification. Open source code speaks far
greater volumes - After all, we're all supported by open source
technology.

Those who patch, extend and collaborate in such an environment are
highly valuable.
That being said, it won't cause any harm either ;)

--

[Bodaniel Jeanes]

I agree that certification is a fairly unimpressive thing to have on
your resume as someone who would hire a Ruby developer.

However, being that we want to get more people into the community, a
community-built certification program might be the right approach. The
benefit here isn't increased chances of being hired, but just
increasing the number of people actively trying to reach a certain
absolute skill level in our profession. If certification provides a
milestone for learning developers to work towards then we get good
applicants to jobs as a side effect anyway.

Bo

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[Josh Price]

On 21/02/2010, at 9:24 PM, Bodaniel Jeanes <m...@bjeanes.com> wrote:

> If certification provides a
> milestone for learning developers to work towards then we get good
> applicants to jobs as a side effect anyway.

I think the most useful aspect of any kind of certification is exactly
as you put it: a milestone.

Once upon a time in a land far away I studied for a Java
certification. It never really got me any jobs to my knowledge, but
provided a useful goal for my self-study, and a mildly satisfying
checkpoint at the end.

Also I absolutely agree that any certification must have the backing
of the community.

J

[Dylan Egan]

I think for the most part being certified is sort of an old school thing, specifically in the Java/Microsoft worlds and in weird networking/sysadmin worlds (like seriously? ;)). I even had a person or two ask me for a certificate of participation when I ran a couple of Ruby workshops a few years ago and I thought it was really odd, but simply because I didn't understand their background.

If you're enjoying the online training I'd recommend just continuing with that and if you feel that you may learn some more things from the certification course then go ahead with that, but think of it as a learning process and not something that'll be useful on your resume (I don't think I've read a resume with Ruby certification before). Otherwise be on the lookout for workshops where you are able to interact with other people and learn in a more interactive environment (faster feedback, etc).

And as others have stated, be active in the community (head to meetups, hack nights, etc), meet people that you can gain knowledge from and start playing with other peoples projects.

Last, but not least, welcome to the community. Beer is your friend.

Cheers,

Dylan.

[Julio Cesar Ody]

Food for thought: none of the icons of our community had to go through
any sort of certification to get to where they are now. All they had
to do was to share their work and knowledge, and the recognition they
got came from that.

That's why I question the need for any of this. Because none of this
was necessary to get us to where we are now. That, and the hippie and
me who thinks that gateways of any such kind only help the
gatekeepers.

I'll reiterate what others said: contribute and show the world what
you can do. Because if you can't do that at all, then there's hardly
helping one's cause.

ps: I know both ideas aren't mutually exclusive. I just think that the
notion of a certification gets eclipsed to pointlessness when compared
to the ability to 1) write truly amazing software, and 2) share it.

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[Robert Gravina]

On 21 February 2010 08:26, Joshua Partogi <joshua....@gmail.com> wrote:
> I asked the same question last year. It seems that Ruby certification
> is more favored in Japan and that is why it is created. Unless you
> want to work as Ruby programmer in Japan, then this certification is
> useless. :-)
>

I'm working as a Ruby programmer in Japan, and I haven't heard anyone
mention the certification yet. Perhaps it used for larger enterprise
or government projects - I'm not entirely sure.

Robert

[Nicholas Faiz]

+1

[Lachie]

Stepping back from the issue another pace, its clear that no pat,
neatly boxed answer ("certification!" or "github!") is a reliable
indicator of employability.

I've been involved in the employment & working with process of both
kinds of folk. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they really didn't.

The problem as I see it is determining ahead of time what the person
will be like to work with. Is the candidate able to be passionate
about their work, and if so, will they become passionate about *your*
product or client for the duration of the contract?

For example, if you hire someone based on their passion for open
source, are you hiring the evident coding chops or the coding chops
*and* the enthusiasm for consistent, fine work? And can they apply
that same enthusiasm to the end of a long, unglamorous-but-paid
project?

Can you tell that from anything but working through an entire project
and seeing how it goes?

In other words, I have no idea how to hire people. I know only that a
candidate being certified or being visible in the community or github
isn't enough to go on.

Sorry Navin, I don't think this really answers your original question,
but its an interesting discussion nonetheless.

:lachie

[Josh Price]

That's very true. Hiring is hard. Ultimately as an employer you're
making a big fat guess but hopefully you've considered all the
available data points.

The criteria I usually end relying on are: passion, intelligence and
getting stuff done. Communication skills also factor in too, which
helps if you're working on a team.

As Lachie points out, certification and github accounts don't feature
in those criteria. They both however represent excellent ways of
determining all of those things.

Cheers,
Josh

[Lachie]

:lachie
http://plus2.com.au
http://smartbomb.com.au
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lachie/

On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 9:20 AM, Josh Price <jos...@gmail.com> wrote:
> That's very true. Hiring is hard. Ultimately as an employer you're making a
> big fat guess but hopefully you've considered all the available data points.
>
> The criteria I usually end relying on are: passion, intelligence and getting
> stuff done. Communication skills also factor in too, which helps if you're
> working on a team.
>
> As Lachie points out, certification and github accounts don't feature in
> those criteria. They both however represent excellent ways of determining
> all of those things.

how?

[Michael Neale]

It is mostly relevant to full time-long term hires, but in Australia probationary periods are normally 3/6 months, I am surprised more people don't use them. Sure, for short/fast projects it is no help, but for longer term hires, people should take that period seriously - if at any time in the 3-6 months it isn't working out... change things... 

On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 9:20 AM, Josh Price <jos...@gmail.com> wrote:

--
Michael D Neale
home: www.michaelneale.net
blog: michaelneale.blogspot.com

[Marty Andrews]

As an employer running a reasonably large local Rails dev company, I'd
say that no existing certifiction will help in hiring. Not ever. In
fact, if you push it in my face, it's a clue that you don't understand
my needs, and it might hinder your chances.

--Marty

Mashed together with 2 thumbs on my iPhone

On 22/02/2010, at 8:50 AM, Lachie <lac...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Josh Price]

On 22/02/2010, at 9:27 AM, Lachie wrote:

On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 9:20 AM, Josh Price <jos...@gmail.com> wrote:

The criteria I usually end relying on are: passion, intelligence and getting

stuff done. Communication skills also factor in too, which helps if you're

working on a team.

As Lachie points out, certification and github accounts don't feature in

those criteria. They both however represent excellent ways of determining

all of those things.

how?

Well this is where it gets subjective and unreliable as you say, but there's potentially some good data points in there.

A github account, shows that you at least know what git is and the basic commands, possibly more.

Contriibuting to OSS shows you're able to read code, write code and communicate with the maintainers.  This also shows passion for solving problems outside of your day job.

A potential employer can read that code, and determine your problem-solving coding style. They could also read through your commit comments and glean data points on your communication style. And so forth...

As Michael points out, probation periods are useful if you happen to make the wrong decision.

Josh

[Navin]

Thanks everyone. I missed the thread on this topic from a few months
ago so apologies for wasting people's time and thanks to those who
chose to re-iterate or reformulate their views.

The good news is that I am set up on github and am mucking around
mainly with sample apps from these tutorials and books so it sounds
like I am lined up reasonably well. I look forward to doing something
non trivial in the open source community - until I am able to do so I
won't feel very happy about foisting myself on an employer!

Also, I have been to one Sydney RoRo so far and look forward to more
of them - will shoot to give a talk once I have something to talk
about (or really feel like I need to learn something urgently :) ) The
beer there is very friendly indeed!

It may interest you to know that certification costs USD150 (which is
cheap compared to certification in the area that I have been working
in) and can be obtained by successfully passing a test consisting of
50 multiple choice questions. Not terribly inspiring but perhaps not
a bad start to setting a personal goal for newbies (rather than a "hey
look at me mr employer, I'm so certified!"). I'll measure the mood on
this within the rubylearning.org community and report back at a later
stage.

Thanks again. Look forward to getting to know this community better.

Navin

twitter: novemberkilo

[Ben Schwarz]

I think you've missed some of the other factors of open source
contributions.

- Ability to write solid documentation
- Presentation skills
- Marketing skills
- Communication of concepts
- Test quality

If you can do all those things in an open source / free time capacity
then you'll probably kick ass in a pain environment given the right
circumstances.

Of course, nothing tells you more about a person than getting them in
a room and having a conversation.

[Ben Hoskings]

On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 11:53 PM, Julio Cesar Ody <juli...@gmail.com> wrote:

Food for thought: none of the icons of our community had to go through
any sort of certification to get to where they are now. All they had
to do was to share their work and knowledge, and the recognition they
got came from that.

Amen. The ruby community is a meritocracy. GitHub profile, employment history, and reputation are certification. But then,

On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 8:50 AM, Lachie <lac...@gmail.com> wrote:

Stepping back from the issue another pace, its clear that no pat,
neatly boxed answer ("certification!" or "github!") is a reliable
indicator of employability.

I think that's definitely true, but GitHub profile alone is a pretty good indicator of a combination of skill and experience, which is one major part of employability. That leaves some big questions unanswered, about things like work ethic, pride in one's craft, the ability to integrate with existing teams, etc.

I'd argue that certification isn't a good indicator of any of that either.

On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 8:50 AM, Lachie <lac...@gmail.com> wrote:

For example, if you hire someone based on their passion for open
source, are you hiring the evident coding chops or the coding chops
*and* the enthusiasm for consistent, fine work? And can they apply
that same enthusiasm to the end of a long, unglamorous-but-paid
project?

I think that's where the community really comes into its own. As Linus said, "If you have ever done any security work, and it did not involve the concept of network of trust, it wasn't security work, it was masturbation." [1]

We have a truly awesome community, which is built on mutual professional respect, friendship, and a network of trust. I think the community's network of trust is the best indicator of those things, and I think certification tries to simulate it by trying to standardise and enumerate the things on which the network of trust is is built. It misses the point completely though, because the network of trust only works when it's a network.

I'm going to be less polite than others: I think certification is completely useless.

—ben_h

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8#t=1645

[Mike Bailey]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 3:16 PM, Ben Hoskings <b...@hoskings.net> wrote:

I'm going to be less polite than others: I think certification is completely useless.

—ben_h

Well said Ben. 

I was getting a bit weirded out by all the "none of us have certification but maybe you should get it". 

- Mike 

[Nicholas Faiz]

There's a further point. Certification is generally to prove that you
know a language or a framework. Some of the frameworks and programming
concepts in the Java world, for example, can carry quite a bit of
complexity with them. It's redundant in the Ruby and the Rails world,
as the Ruby language is exceptionally simple to achieve things with
(part of its elegance) and the Rails framework is very straightforward
on how to go about solving a problem. This notion of simplicity
generally extends to other libraries, Sinatra, etc..

The key point is identifying how to learn these things when you're
starting out, and then show a potential employer that you are ready to
be productive and profitable for their organization with the tools
they platform gives you. Showing them a working piece of open source
code, any sort of program which solves a problem, is a much better
start than a piece of paper from a strange academy. The open source
argument has been explained well above already.

I'd recommend buying one or two good books, working through them, then
writing some programs and chatting about them with other Ruby coders.

On a side note, I certified in the Java programming language ages ago,
and while it was useful to have the depth of knowledge in the
language, it was hardly needed on a daily basis and it did not
represent the sort of programming problems I generally have to solve
in commercial work. I don't think they are that useful, really.

Cheers,
Nicholas

On Feb 22, 3:16 pm, Ben Hoskings <b...@hoskings.net> wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 11:53 PM, Julio Cesar Ody <julio...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > Food for thought: none of the icons of our community had to go through
> > any sort of certification to get to where they are now. All they had
> > to do was to share their work and knowledge, and the recognition they
> > got came from that.
>
> Amen. The ruby community is a meritocracy. GitHub profile, employment
> history, and reputation are certification. But then,
>

> On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 8:50 AM, Lachie <lach...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Stepping back from the issue another pace, its clear that no pat,
> > neatly boxed answer ("certification!" or "github!") is a reliable
> > indicator of employability.
>
> I think that's definitely true, but GitHub profile alone is a pretty good
> indicator of a combination of skill and experience, which is one major part
> of employability. That leaves some big questions unanswered, about things
> like work ethic, pride in one's craft, the ability to integrate with
> existing teams, etc.
>
> I'd argue that certification isn't a good indicator of any of that either.
>

[Josh Price]

On 22/02/2010, at 3:35 PM, Mike Bailey wrote:

On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 3:16 PM, Ben Hoskings <b...@hoskings.net> wrote:

I'm going to be less polite than others: I think certification is completely useless.

—ben_h

Well said Ben. 

+1

I was getting a bit weirded out by all the "none of us have certification but maybe you should get it". 

I think I was the only one to say anything other than 'certification is useless'.  My point was that it's useless to the existing Ruby community, but a newcomer to the language could use certification materials as a guide to self-study (like I once did back in my Java days).

Having looked at the Ruby Association curriculum more carefully, it looks so basic it's not worth reading the webpage let alone paying $150 for doing a test. Grab some books and write some code. Come to the meetups and hack nights if you can and get exposure to the community.

As others have pointed out, that's the best resume of all.

J

[Bodaniel Jeanes]

> I think I was the only one to say anything other than 'certification is
> useless'.  My point was that it's useless to the existing Ruby community,
> but a newcomer to the language could use certification materials as a guide
> to self-study (like I once did back in my Java days).

This was my aim too. Though, Ben's additions to the discussion have
rung very strongly with me. If the material you need to cover to get
certified actually teaches you something, then that's the only place
for potential value as far as I can see, but that value may be very
small. Especially because of:

> Having looked at the Ruby Association curriculum more carefully, it looks so
> basic it's not worth reading the webpage let alone paying $150 for doing a
> test. Grab some books and write some code.

> [certification] can be obtained by successfully passing a test consisting of
> 50 multiple choice questions

multiple choice questions don't do anyone any favours. I would
actively distrust anyone who thought they knew Ruby because they could
answer some questions and more so of someone who thought that someone
else knew Ruby because of it.

It sounds to be that the only thing you'd end up being certified in
being able to answer questions "correctly"

> Come to the meetups and hack
> nights if you can and get exposure to the community.
> As others have pointed out, that's the best resume of all.

This is the real key.