Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 19:15:42 -0500 From: Walter Brameld <brameld@twave.net> To: goodleaf <john@home.com>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: In re: Certifications (long and rambling) Message-ID: <00030119282305.00719@Bozo_3.BozoLand.domain> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0003010917290.1205-100000@C702312-A.sttln1.wa.home.com> References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0003010917290.1205-100000@C702312-A.sttln1.wa.home.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Now this is a money-making opportunity if I ever saw one, also a great chance to promote FreeBSD and other *nixes in general and help launch promising careers. Gather all ye *nix experts and runneth a Certification course. Do it by internet, setting up a server to deal with issuing course material and tests upon credit-card payments should be a trivial task. Ensure true qualification as opposed to possibly pooled knowledge by requiring graduate candidates to take the finals in person at varied convenient sites. I am not being facetious, I would be one of the first to apply. I would help implement it myself except for the catch-22. I need to learn the system to help set up the course so I can learn the system....... Revenues would be used to re-imburse people involved in the project to a certain extent (we mostly are volunteers, have I heard that somewhere from time to time?), maintain course servers and help promote the further development of the involved OS's. Hey, it's just a vagrant thought I had. I should learn to discipline my thinking a little better..... On Wed, 01 Mar 2000, in a never-ending search for enlightenment, goodleaf wrote: > I realize I risk extreme sanction here, but: > > I have known several certified idiots, but on the other hand I've actually > taken a short cert course in programming basics, and I have to say I > learned quite a bit. (A vast improvement over the absolutely nothing I > knew prior.) Of course this doesn't qualify me as a software engineer, but > I can do a bit in C and Perl. > > This was at the University of Washington, which AFAIK, does a lot of work > to ensure their cert courses are somewhat rigorous. I think that cert > courses in principle are a tremendously good idea, particularly where the > course teaches basic skills to people who don't know much about the > subject at hand, but who have some education in other things. Clearly, > it's not as good as a full computer science degree, but for people like > me, reasonably intelligent people who already have an education (I have > two degrees already.) a certification course is a Good Thing. > > The problem with cert courses as they exist in most places is that they're > extremely poorly implemented and not held to any particular academic > standard. But this is not an absolute; there are good cert courses, so > I think the knee-jerk prejudice against certification that I see among > UNIX folk is misplaced and unproductive. What would be nice is a > pooling of what we know. Which specific courses are bad? Which schools > are turning out too many idiots? > > I'd very much like to see a good FreeBSD cert course out there. If it's > well done, it would teach me a lot and pad my resume. Both things are > good. > > I may take the UW's Unix Administration cert course. I'll let you know how > it goes. > > Thanks, > John > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message -- Walter Brameld in·tel·lec·tu·al n. Someone who has been educated past his/her level of intelligence. Join the Army, meet interesting people, kill them. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?00030119282305.00719>