[BangPypers] Certification

[Anand Balachandran Pillai]

I am not a fan of certifications, but I think he raises a valid point.
In today's IT industry, "certifications" are a fact and are here to stay.
Of course, the most important thing is to build up skills by yourself.
Especially in learning a language, there is nothing like teaching
yourself and writing code. I know this myself, since I have taught
myself four programming languages (C/C++, Java & Python)
without the recourse of any "formal training", OTOH just by
learning from the Internet and participating in forums and writing
my own code and developing my own projects.

Still, having a "certification program" seems to increase the
popularity and effectiveness of adoption of a language in the IT
industry. Python is gaining popularity and increasing adoption
everyday and having a real certification program for it shall only
increase the profile of the language. Especially in a software industry
market like India (and Bangalore specifically) it looks like certifications
are in demand.

I have often found it difficult to assess the programming skills and
knowledge of candidates appearing as "Python programmers". In
my previous company which was a Python shop, a typical candidate
interview used to play out like this...

Me: So, how will you rate yourself in Python say in a scale 1-5 ?
Candidate: Ummmm.... like 3.
Me: Ok, very good. Can you write out a list comprehension to compute
the sum of a series ?
Candidate: Err... what is a list comprehension ?
Me: Ah, I thought you knew it. What did you tell me your Python
experience was ?
Candidate: I have worked in Plone and Zope and have written Python scripts.
Me: Ok...

I am not trying to denigrate Plone/Zope developers here  (I know they
are great platforms and there are amazing Python programmers who
do Zope/Plone primarily for a living). But I found it difficult to separate the
guy who has been doing only Plone/Zope customization and the guy
who has worked in Python as a language away from "platforms".

Perhaps a certification could be of use here. Not from the geek perspective,
but from companies looking to hire Python programmers. It does make
a lot of  practical sense.

To answer the OP's question, there are no certification programs I know
for Python in Bangalore. However, I think there is a requirement and space
for this and we as a group should try and look into this. Any ideas ?

Regards

--Anand

On 10/24/07, Sridhar Ratnakumar <sridhar.ratna at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/23/07, Goutham D L <dl.goutham at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> > Are there any Python certification programmes in bangalore?
> >
>
> So I tried googling for this certification thing and came up with
>   http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-announce-list/2005-June/004077.html
>
> .. also this,
> http://www.amazon.co.uk/Python-Interview-Questions-Answers-Explanations/dp/1933804548
>
> If you intention behind doing this "certification" is to build up your
> profile and increase the job prospects, just write software in Python
> -- and add that to your resume.
>
> Here's your map,
>
> 1. Learn Python - http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy/
> 2. Master Python - http://diveintopython.org/
> 3. Read code
> 4. Write code - sourceforge.net et. al
> 5. Goto 3
>
> Examinations are not required, but hacker spirit is.
>
> --
> http://nearfar.org/
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>


-- 
-Anand