On Dec 10, 2007 12:28 PM, Jim Clark <diegoslice / gmail.com> wrote:
> Austin Ziegler wrote:
> > The 90 hours of classroom work that you're spending for a certificate
> > could be spent working on an open source project and contributing code
> > that would help others and help you forge something even more valuable
> > than a certificate: a reputation. And that is something that will
> > matter to me when I'm involved in hiring far more than any certificate
> > ever will.
> >
> > I think your UW cert will be better than most crap certs out there,
> > based on what you've described, but I still don't think it's the best
> > use of your time or money, compared to *shipping* open source
> > projects.
> >
> The same could be said for *every* training program out there. For
> instance, let's look at David Black's announcement today for
> "Introduction to Ruby on Rails" and "Advancing with Rails". Each course
> is 5 days long and costs $1,770 (or $1,550 early bird). So, for 80 hours
> (maybe only 70 hours if there is a lunch hour each day) of classroom
> instruction, it costs a minimum of $3,100 or $3,540 for
> procrastinators.  You walk in on Monday, and 12 days later on the
> following Friday you walk out with head crammed full of Rails info.
>
> Do you think that is any better than 90 classroom hours spaced out over
> 8 months with another two or three hundred hours spent on homeworks /
> projects to slowly digest the material

I don't know what Austin would say, but I think so.  I have every bit
of respect for what Mr. David Black does for the Ruby and also the
Rails community.  So, I would take his classes.  Not for credit, but
for knowledge.

> I don't hear you or anyone else
> talking about "crap training" (which I'm sure David's is not) or how
> those student's time or money would be better spent on shipping open
> source projects and building their reputation.

I think some people are thinking that until you actually _do_
something, you are full of that stuff that comes out your bottom.  By
the use of the word "you" I mean people in general, not you
personally.

>
> Properly done, certification encompasses training and ensures all
> students have a base proficiency of fundamental Ruby and/or Rails
> concepts. That is what UW does and why it is not just a paper cert. I am
> enrolled in the UW program because I want to learn the language better
> and not be sitting in front of a debugger tracing other people's buggy
> code (which I've done and submitted a bug fix on RubyForge for Ruby DBI).
>
> Both classroom instruction and contributing to open source projects are
> valuable ways to learn the language. I just don't think it is up to you
> to decide what is the best use of my time or money :-) .

Well, nobody is deciding that.  But, if you were the person hiring
someone to help you on something very important, would a cert matter
at all?

> Cheers,
> Jim

Cheers,
Todd