[thelist] Industry Associations

[Tamara Abbey]

At 01:57 PM 4/4/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>some of you may have heard my rants about the HTML Writer's
>Guild... i have no problem with them in general... but i get lots of
>resumes, and see lots of sites, by people who couldn't code their
>way out of a paper tag...
>
>but somehow they think that displaying the logo, or mentioning
>their membership in the HTML Writer's Guild lends them some
>credibility (fwiw, in my eyes, it's more of a detriment on a resume...
>good code speaks for itself, and i'll see that in the portfolio
>pieces)...

Yup, I've seen some of those sites. And, you get what you want out of 
membership. No, there are no minimum requirements for membership, but I 
know I've learned a lot about writing valid code. And at least I was 
introduced to concepts like validating and DTDs and other *standards.* As 
with many organizations, it was up to me to take advantage of the advice 
and guidance I received.

I do mention my membership to some prospective clients mostly so they know 
that I do my best to take myself seriously and try to learn as much as I 
can (I thought I was getting to where I knew at least a thing until I 
signed up over here <g>).

For some people, that type of industry affiliation is important, it's just 
as important as making sure your emergency room doctor is an M.D. and not a 
Ph.D. AFAIK, there is no such distinction for coding. I know there's a few 
programs out there -- you want to talk about some ugly code?? You should 
see what some of these *schools* are teaching -- I said some! As with all 
things -- there's good and there's bad.

FWIW
<tamara />