NYCPHP Meetup

[max goldberg]

Jon Baer wrote:
> Analysis & Solutions wrote:
> 
> 
>>On Fri, Dec 06, 2002 at 05:03:46PM -0500, Jon Baer wrote:
>> 
>>
>>
>>>You know ... this REALLY leads to a better discussion on possible PHP 
>>>Certification of some kind
>>>   
>>>
>>
>>Bah.  Certification can just mean you're good at taking tests.  Doesn't 
>>necessarily reflect real world smarts, discipline, nor research and 
>>hacking skills.
>>
>>A good interview, references and coding examples prove far more than any 
>>certification test.
>> 
>>
> 
> Im gonna partly agree with you.  I myself have a few years of JSP, ATG 
> Dynamo, [insert your favorite J2EE app server here], but have *yet* to 
> land a PHP/MySQL gig (in the middle of a convert project right now), I 
> have been so tempted to stay away from certification but without 
> employers being EXTREMELY specific on what they are looking for instead 
> of jotting down every acronym they have seen in a magazine somewhere, 
> what other options do you have?  
> 
> Its either:
> 
> [Business] needs X, Y, Z
> Candidate has done X,Y,Z
> Candidate has never done X,Y,Z but certified to know how to do X,Y,Z.
> 
> How diverse and broad is PHP for a project?  Extremely, and to me (it 
> seems anyway), that if you can SSH ur way into a companies site to do 
> work, there should be no questions asked, certification or no 
> certification.  So im not complaining, good experience makes up for it 
> to some degree but I really wonder how many resumes a biz guy is going 
> to get these days that all look the same.  
> 
> - Jon

I'm not sure about you, but having the ability to ssh doesn't really 
mean anything to me. I'd say one of the problems with php is that it
is so loose, you don't really have to know anything about 'programming'
to write it. From my experience, as most non-technical management can't
tell the difference between a really skilled coder and someone who can
use words like 'pro-active' and 'methodology'.

I think to truly be qualified you need to understand many things beyond
syntax, which most people don't get. It seems no one even writes code
for high performance and low resource usage any more. Everyone needs 
their hand held through the most basic of exercises. I'm not sure if 
it's just my opinion and current situation, it just seems like a lot
of people who make a living of programming/scripting web applications
have absolutely no idea what they are doing.

I read a good rant which made a lot of sense to me at
http://m.bacarella.com/papers/secsoft/html/

-max