[thelist] Web Developer Certification

[aardvark]

> From: "Bill Haenel" <bill at webmarketingworx.com>
[...]
> 1. What if certification of some sort *was* necessary in the field of
> web dev? What currently available certifications would most likely end
> up being required? Are there particular certifying bodies already in
> existence that would prevail if it really mattered?

if the W3C offered certs, i'd consider it... right now you have certs
offered by orgs with no weight behind them... those on thelist long
enough have seen me aghast at the idea that the HTML Writers' Guild
(a shaky idea to begin with, IMO) might offer certs, but there's no
guarantee that the developer with that cert actually *knows* all the
stuff i want him/her to know as an employee... and the Guild is not
exactly an impartial body, IMO, that should be handing out certs...

given that, some of my staff are going for their Adobe ACE certs in
Photoshop... at least that way, they are certified in a tool by the
body that makes the tool...

but a cert in web dev, well, who would *you* trust as the certifying
body?  what makes Jerry's Web Cert better/worse than that by the HTML
Writers' Guild? wouldn't the standards body in charge of it be best
qualified to create a cert (like Adobe has with their products)?

> 2. Should certification in our (mostly) technical field of web
> development be required? Should it at least be preferred?

if i get a resume with some cert for HTML or web dev listed on it, i
genuinely have to suppress a laugh... sure, go to your local New
Horizons and take some classes in HTML, but don't bring their little
slip of accomplishment to me as a mark of your ability... who knows
if they taught you to use notepad or FrontPage, and that slip tells
me neither...

instead, offer me your best site to sit down and walk through... i
want to get into the source, i want to test it in browsers, i want to
poke it with a stick...

however, a resume with an ACE (or MCSE, as others have noted) cert on
it says something  -- recognized body, recognized tool... that ACE in
Photoshop tells me that i can sit you in front of Photoshop and give
you discrete Photoshop tasks and get you billable as a resource
immediately, even if i have to train you up on HTML on the side....

> 3. Do you hope to see our industry become a more organized, regulated,
> functional machine so that it may always work properly, or is it
> better off being free and open so that growth and creativity may
> flourish?

the latter...

sure, i'm a proponent of standards and accessibility, and i think you
need to have a body define those... but i really don't like governing
bodies defining what i can do legally (which is what i take
regulation to mean)...

organized or functional?  no, that won't happen anyway... does it
happen in the software dev world?  nope... any hack with MS VB can
turn out memory-hemorrhaging screen savers... in the design world?
any hack with Photoshop is going to turn out ink-hemorrhaging
posters...

nah, i don't see that happening...


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