On 3/28/06, Gregory Brown <gregory.t.brown / gmail.com> wrote:
>
> No.  For the reasons others have mentioned.  Public mailing lists are
> a better way to learn, and any test to 'measure your skills' will
> surely be missing some important things and have some unnecessary
> things.

I agree with James Britt's and Gregory's assessments. I know I've
learned a lot more from answering questions on this mailing list than
I would from studying for and taking some exam. I think the whole
certification/exam thing fits in more with a very corporate
environment, like you find in the Java community. I know Rails has
drawn a lot of attention to Ruby from the corporate world, but I'd
prefer to keep the nice community spirit we have and not get too
sucked into the corporate environment, at least as far as culture is
concerned.

With that said, there is nothing stopping people from making exams or
certifications for Ruby, but frankly they won't mean much without the
support of the community. Plus it is very important to have Ruby
experts involved otherwise the exam itself may not even be accurate
(as James Edward Gray II illustrated earlier in this thread.) That
situation is worse than have no exam at all...much worse.

Ryan