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Certifications revisited (was: Javaranch's image discussion)

 
Ranch Hand
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I understand that some people are concerned that a certified programmer may never write any code. That may be true. But that's interviewer's job to find out as much as possible.
Experience is the same thing. A so-called 10 year veteran may present himself very well during the interview and may be technically far away from that high level. How can you tell ? Again, it is interviewer's job.
 
mister krabs
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Exactly! That is my point. The certification tells you nothing about the quality of a programmer. You can only determine that with an interview. As I said, I have never viewed the certification as either a negative or positive on a resume. If I was hiring an entry level person with no experience it might matter to the extent that I might (depending on how the stars were aligned that day) give the person with the certification an interview before the person without the certification.
 
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Originally posted by Abadula Joshi:

but if these people claim that "I have such high level of programming skill", the statement is false and cheating simply because they don't have such skills.


Well, that's the point. That's why some of us don't value certification. (In fairness, many who say such things, don't realize that they lack the proper skills.)
--Mark
 
Abadula Joshi
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Actually not every certificate can be earned by studying exam cram books. For SCJP and SCWCD, it may be true. But from my experience of earning SCJD and SCEA, I don't think so. It is hard to pass SCJD if you can't really write good codes, it is hard to pass SCEA if you don't know how to do class/sequence/component diagrams. If you have someone write for you, can you pass the follow-up exam ? Well, you may have someone take it for you as well. Either way it is real cheating.
So, talking about java certificates, I think we should say that SCJD and SCEA reflect more on a person's real skills than SCJP and SCWCD do. Have you seen a SCJD can't write good code, assuming he didn't cheat to get the certificate ?
 
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Professional certificates help you convince the middle-party-agencies(who don't know the difference between JavaServlets and JavaScript) so that your resume atleast reaches the final client's desk.
Real experience helps you answer the client's technical interview.
Educational degrees help raise your position and pay once they decide you are joing the company.
On the other hand...
if you are going to deal with the client company's technical manager directly who is desperately looking for some hard-code programmers with significant experience in similar projects, then those professional certifications and academic/educational ceritificates probably mean nothing to him.
if you are planning to join a small IT department of a big non-IT company, where IT is not a major part of their business (yes there are thousands of such brick and mortar companies), chances are that the manager will not ask you how to write a multithreaded java program. Your personality and presentation may buy you more weight than the real experince. In some cases your academic certificates will be more helpful.
if you are going to join a very small-sized company where your friend is considered a respected senior developer, or the owner of the company is a neighbor of your dear uncle, or, ... then you probably don't need either of the certificates or experience
So to combine what Jason, Mark, and Abadula said: Only some of the certifications are valuable because someone else perceives they are valuable.
 
Mark Herschberg
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Originally posted by Abadula Joshi:
Actually not every certificate can be earned by studying exam cram books. For SCJP and SCWCD, it may be true. But from my experience of earning SCJD and SCEA, I don't think so. It is hard to pass SCJD if you can't really write good codes, it is hard to pass SCEA if you don't know how to do class/sequence/component diagrams.


I agree that the SCEA is harder to spoof. But don't let the name fool you, someone who ha passed the SCEA is not necessarily an architect. it just means he can build a small project, is familiar with the different technologies, and knows how to draw class diagrams, etc. I knwo some SCEA's only a few years out of school who, while smart people, aren't ready to architect a large system.
Remember a test only tests what's covered by its questions, not what's covered in the name of the test. In short, even if the SCEA does demonstrate a mastery of skills, those skills alone do not an architect make.
--Mark
 
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Given that what it is we're attributing in attributing mental states is conscious intentionality, Searle maintains, insistence on the "first-person point of view" is warranted; because "the ontology of the mind is a first-person ontology": "the mind consists of qualia [subjective conscious experiences] . . . right down to the ground" (1992, p. 20).


Well, yeah, you have that problem with certifications. But you have it with degrees too. And you have it with people who interview well.
 
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Mark -
The 'Chinese Room Experiment' is pretty cool. It seems to me that it can jump into philosophy very quickly... Whether something has 'meaning' is an interesting question. How do we know that we ascribe the correct 'meaning ' to things? Who is to say we're not just robots that can reproduce, and that everything that 'means' something to us is just to support that end goal?
Personally I think my dog has a much better grasp of 'meaning' than I do
 
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Certifcation is useful or not?
For me, since I have no way to return them to get refund, so the only way is to hold on to them.
 
Mark Herschberg
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Originally posted by Bert Bates:
Mark -
The 'Chinese Room Experiment' is pretty cool. It seems to me that it can jump into philosophy very quickly... Whether something has 'meaning' is an interesting question. How do we know that we ascribe the correct 'meaning ' to things? Who is to say we're not just robots that can reproduce, and that everything that 'means' something to us is just to support that end goal?


(As this thread continues to wander...)
If you like that idea, two books I'd recommend
are:
The Society of Mind by Marbin Minsky
The Selfish Gene* by Richard Dawkins

*Warning: I've heard that people ahve changed their outlook on life and children after reading this book.

--Mark
 
Greenhorn
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Hi all,
I very often in my professional career wished I would have met and worked with more people that hold a Java certification. Not a Java certification alone - always in addition with a BS or MS in Computer Science - certification needs a good foundation. I very strongly believe that work of certified people often results in much higher quality code than of those not certified.
Lots of mistakes could be avoided by properly learning the programming language and its libraries, as is required with SCPJ.
Some examples:
- Method Variables (needing initialization) beeing initialized just to be assigned a reference of the same type in the first line of usage:
TypeX x = new TypeX();

x = someAlreadyExistingTypeXReference;
(looks very stupid, but really seen very often. Can result in a lot of work for the garabage colector.)
- Still using Hashtable and Vector
- Never closing any Objects of type Statement etc.
- use of lausy naming schemes on Classes and
variable names
- Misusage of double variables instead of BigDecimal (Rounding Problems)
- Lacking knowledge about the java.util classes
- Not knowing what is passed by reference and
what is passed by value in java

This list could go on for a while. Base line: you need not only a thorough understanding of computer science principles but also of the language you are using. Learning on the job is not at all enough.
Cheers,
Taudo
[ February 08, 2003: Message edited by: Taudo Wenzel ]
 
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My two cents in this are that from my personal experience certification helps a lot. Before i passed my SCJP i was coding but doing a lot of bodging just to get it right, however studying for my exam i gained a much deeper understanding of the language. And while i have seen a couple young kids passing it including the one of 14 this is always going to be the case. Over here in England we have had cases of 8 year old prodigies passing a degree in mathematics, and teenagers with PHD's. There are always going to be exceptional kids whereever. However on the other hand we have a few programmers who found it really tough, and while you probably can pass it without coding its A) pointless and B) very tough..
Also my own little feel good story is that i was only programming as a hobby at work but as soon as i passed the SCJP the IT department saw that i had the commitment and asked me onto their project team, from which i have gained loads of great experience. Without passing the exam i wouldn't have been asked on and wouldn't have gained the experience so it was worth all the effort and has now encouraged me to go for my Masters in Computer Science, although i also intend to come back and do my developers and architects in the future.
Also while i would say that the SCJP is great it seems to be more of a primer, it leads people onto the much more valuable developer and architect exams. I can believe Thomas not using SCJP to decide between two candidates with similar experience but what about if one has the developers or even the architects against the other uncertified guy, both with similiar experience levels, would he still then disregard the value of the certification in his hiring decision???
 
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