Java Programmer Certification Advice/Help

Miscellaneous Topics
#21

Ahhhhh… Deep sigh, at least I know I’d have at least one chance of being hired - of course I’d have to move over seas, but thats ok. Not sure if my wife would agree. :wink:

I’d have to agree that American education is some of the goofiest around. I just sort of assume that German/Indian/Japanese students for example are in general smarter (or at least more prepared) than their US counterparts. Of course I also believe education is what you make of it.

Case in point about our weird education and capitalism. We have many immigrants who speak spanish and its derivatives. Rather than make people learn english-us version, money scum bags have started labeling cereal in spanish. Automotive stores have signs indicating whats in the aisle in english and spanish. Why not funnel the money into educating people? If I went to Switzerland, which I hope to do some day. I in no way expect anyone or anything to be english related. I fully expect to speak french or else flounder in my abilities to communicate.

We have schools that teach in spanish up into middle school. :frowning: When my grandparents moved near us, I learned sign language the way all other kids did - I used it. My grandparent’s weren’t going to start talking, given they are deaf. When I stayed the night at their house, I learned to sign, because I had to. There was no ‘transition’ so to speak.

Now, I think speaking multiple languages is great. I think people moving about to different countries is great too. I just don’t think its any countries ‘job’ to do anything but carry on educating people in the language of the country, whether we admit its official or not.

So, since this thread turned into a how people are viewed with a cert, I just ordered the book I thought of originally. I’ll fill you all in with my progress. Hopefully, I’ll be adding a very small, un-obtrusive bullet to my cv/resume soon. :slight_smile:

Dr. A>

#22

[quote]Turning that on it’s head; I would also reject someone with a Ph.D in Comp Sci unless I had a very specific, high-tech need to do so - too narrow a focus.
[/quote]
Although this attitude is common I think it is also rather unfair. Of course as I have a PhD myself I would say that. Undoubtedly some PhD holders do have a narrow outlook, but many others do not. After all it is quite common for such people to end up in areas significantly removed from their original research.

I also have done some Microsoft certifications, not because they were relevant to my work, but because the company needed x certified people and I’m the expert at passing exams with minimal preparation.

Just as well that I don’t have to prepare a CV very often.

#23

[quote]If I went to Switzerland, which I hope to do some day. I in no way expect anyone or anything to be english related. I fully expect to speak french or else flounder in my abilities to communicate.
[/quote]
French is but one of (I think) four official languages in Switzerland. Unfortunately they sometimes aren’t very helpful if you use the wrong language for the locality.

#24

[quote]If I can’t find out anything useful about a given degree course, I treat it with suspicion, and will probably rate the person almost entirely as if they were non-graduated - i.e. based on their practical experience and performance at interview.
[/quote]
That’s an odd attitude. Assuming you can verify the university and that the degree is valid, but you can’t get the level of detail about the course that you want, you would still rate the person as a non-graduate?
I’m not sure you’d find what you wanted about my degree, but from what I’ve heard degrees from my uni are generally accepted as being better than the equivalent from the US (and at least as good as the UK).

No offence to the various posters but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of open mindedness here. Case in point, I’ve worked with a PhD who was absolutely useless. Would I therefore view all prospective employees with PhD’s as the same? No. But (whether or not it was the intention of the posters), you get the distinct impression that their hiring is based upon personal stereotypes.

#25

Yes, your last statement is more correct than false. Somehow the person doing the hiring has to trim down the list of applications down to around 3-6 interviews. HR trims out the really offmark ones, the techies doing the interviews trim the rest. Unless the resume stands out from the “stereotypical” one, it’s more likely than not to be not considered. Most of us that are on the other side of the fence have been around the traps for quite a number of years and built up a list of likes and dislikes in people they’ve worked with and use that to decide who gets the nod for an interview.

#26

Yes, but personally I try not to put arbitrary conditions on who I’m going to interview based on my own likes/dislikes.

i.e. we need someone with a degree and with x amount of years experience in whatever buzzword-compliant technology we’re hiring for. I do not automatically cross someone off the list because they also have certification, or have a PhD. Frankly I’d rather do 6 interviews than 3 (and I absolutely loath interviewing) if I couldn’t reduce the list other than by using stereotypes.

#27

That’s ridiculous. So wouldn’t having certification pretty much ensure that you know the skill/language well enough to know the basics like that?

Also, what’s a CV? Is it like a term for a résumé? Acronymfinder.com is leading me to believe it stands for Curriculum Vitae…

I got into programming a few years ago, and ever since then I’ve been trying to pick up as many languages as I can. I guess it’s won’t be very useful in the long run, as I’ll probably only use one or two of them in whatever job I land. The main reason I’ve been doing this is because I love to program, and I love learning new things. Also, I would say that I learn pretty fast. A big part of it however where some articles I read back in the day about how to get a job doing web development. They gave examples of sample resumes, and basically said that you want to learn as much as you can, because most of the jobs you’ll get will be language specific, and you want to be prepared for everything. Do you think if I’m getting into a web development job that will only entail using saw php, mysql, html, etc… that I would also include my profficient knowledge of java, c++, etc…?

The same would apply with certifications. From what I’m reading, there are situations in which certification will hurt your chances of landing an interview. I’m a young college student (pursuing a degree in cs), with no real world experience yet, so I don’t expect anyone to hire me anytime soon, but I put my resume on the web just for fun. I actually went to some crap site (www.brainbench.com), took there little java quiz (and some others), and put there images saying I aced the quizes on my resume site. They wanted me to pay for the actual piece of paper saying I passed, but I settled for the image :wink:

I knew that their little certification wouldn’t matter if somebody saw my resume, but I certainly didn’t think it would hurt me. I put them at the bottom of my resume, because I knew they were the least important things, but I’m taking them completely off tomorrow, after I get some sleep!

I don’t know anything about writing a resume, but I put the languages I’m very experienced with in a table of their own at the top, followed by languages I know, and have used, but don’t use often. After that, I put a list of applications I have a lot of experience using. Next is a short description of me, what I’m doing, and what I’ve done. Finally is a section is an awards and certificates section. I’m just out of high school, so that’s pretty much all I’ve experienced. So I put the awards I’ve earned in state competitions through clubs I was in in that section, as well as the images for the certification I earned through brainbench. Maybe you guys could check it out and tell me what needs to go:
http://gaming.cyntaks.com/projects/resume/

For somebody like me, with no experience ‘working’ in the industry, do you think getting certification would help me, or hurt me? Or would it still be on a case-by-case basis, even though I have no experience?

A few last questions. You guys were saying that one of the java cert tests is a week long?? Is it like a little course you have to take, and then you take a test at the end? Or do you take the test for a week? Or… is it only like that in the UK? Sorry about the many newb questions + lots of irrelivant nonsense :stuck_out_tongue:

  • Breadstick
#28

[quote] Also, what’s a CV? Is it like a term for a résumé? Acronymfinder.com is leading me to believe it stands for Curriculum Vitae…
[/quote]
That’s correct. Another description for acronym, more likely used in the Commonwealth countries.

#29

I have a bunch of MS certificates and not only do they seem to have a little more prestige in terms of potential employers - perhaps because if you are working with microsoft technologies you are more likely to be recruited by a PHB than a technical specialist like Mithrandir or Blah3 - and having a couple of certified developers gets you the kind of Microsoft Friendly Company status that allows you to get cheap licences on loads of their products. I don’t know if Sun does anything similar or whether they even could do something with the same appeal to the SME on the street, but it does work pretty well.

I heard somewhere that the higher level Java certs actually require some kind of project type work as well as answering a few questions, but the person who told me that was a bit dodgy and I have no idea whether they were lying or not.

#30

The thing you have to realise about CVs is that their primary purpose is not to get you an interview, it’s to stop yourself being rejected for an interview.

When a recruiter is hiring, they will recieve many, many times more CVs than positions available. It’s impractical to interview everyone, so you need to whittle the list down a bit (or sometimes a lot.) It’s frequently impractical to even read all the CVs that come in, so often the recruiter will choose to discard everything that’s not x pages long, or everything not in black-and-white, or indeed just discard the first half of a pile.

Also, note that it’s reasonably unimportant to get the right person for a position - the really important bit is not getting the wrong person. While the almost-right person won’t be quite as useful to the company than they could be, the wrong person will waste time, set projects back, and generally cost the company money.

These two together generally explain why the above people, who have lots of experience with this kind of thing, are so draconian with their CV selection. If someone doesn’t rate certifications, then they will treat people quoting it with suspicion. If there’s the slightest possibility that a person is the wrong person for the job, it’s good business sense just to ditch the CV and continue.

But do note that the people above aren’t representative of the whole industry! While they don’t like certifications, many people do. For what it’s worth, I’ve been to many, many interviews where people have commented on my certification - in a positive way.

Edit: [quote]I heard somewhere that the higher level Java certs actually require some kind of project type work as well as answering a few questions, but the person who told me that was a bit dodgy and I have no idea whether they were lying or not.
[/quote]
Whoops, sorry, missed this!

Yep, the Developer exam requires the candidate to undertake a full-lifecycle project, from concept and design all the way to packaging for delivery. It’s usually a database app with a GUI front-end, using as much “cool” tech as you can fit in. You get marked on project planning, efficient design, correct implementation etc.

#31

[quote] having a couple of certified developers gets you the kind of Microsoft Friendly Company status that allows you to get cheap licences on loads of their products.
[/quote]
This is something of a trap in that the licences are only valid as long as you stay signed up, which means ensuring each year that you have the requisite number of qualified people and whatever other rules MS introduce (there are new rules for next year if you haven’t already noticed). You are also required to use the latest version of all that software.
If you decide to leave this scheme you face a significant hit, as you need to buy regular licences for the software you use (or move to Linux).

#32

If you’ve decided you’re going to focus on being an MS dev house anyway, it works out fairly well.

#33

Well, this thread generated all kinds of excitement. Mostly though, very few people actually admitted to having any Sun certs, while a vast majority had strong opinions on whether you should or not. :stuck_out_tongue:

Here’s an update to getting my Programmer Cert, good or bad.

  • I’ve been going through the book I decided on and have been learning things I didn’t know.
    – Java has an assert statement, who knew?
    –Learning about goofy things like putting the default case in a switch statement somewhere other than the end
    – Discovering labeled breaks and continues. Joy, my pseudo goto at last! :slight_smile:

  • I didn’t know as much Java as I thought I did

  • In some instances, I knew more than the people I’m studying with

  • I’m slightly past the 1/2 point, so the test should be in about 4 weeks.

  • I’m convinced that being certified doesn’t make you a programmer. If you’re a programmer, who gets certified, it will make you a better programmer.

More to come!

Dr. A>

#34

I think most of us here who who’ve been using java since 1.2 or so. Assert arrived with a farting sound in 1.4. It does nothing, almost - a bit like a precursor to generics: it changes the syntax, breaks some (in some cases lots, depending upon your coding conventions) of existing code, yet brings almost none of the benefits of what people expect from a 21st century assertions system.

You were better off not knowing about this. Then, the first time you saw it, you would probably automatically delete the offending code, believing it to be illegal java, thereby ridding the world of one more piece of evil. :stuck_out_tongue:

#35

If I didn’t respect you so much, I’d just ignore you! :stuck_out_tongue:

None the less, I’m learning more about things I could use, not what I will use. If the only tool I had was a hammer, all my problems might look like nails. Now at least, they might look like nails or bolts. :slight_smile:

Dr. A>

#36

[quote]If I didn’t respect you so much, I’d just ignore you! :stuck_out_tongue:
[/quote]
Ahh man, that was great :wink: I love this community!

Yeah I’ve also stared at those labelled breaks myself and decided against using them. Seems like a cheap hack for being too lazy to organize good code.

#37

i love the labeled breaks. It makes much cleaner, better code in my opinion. Much nicer than propagating some bogus boolean outof the inner loop into the conditions of the outer loops.
i.e. no more of this


boolean breakOut = false;
while(someCondition && !breakOut)
{
    foo();
    for(int i ; 0; i < 10)
    {
        if (blah())
        {
            breakOut = true;
            break;
        }
}

That stuff gets to be a mess and a labeled break is a much cleaner solution, with resorting to the same level of ‘danger’ that goto brings.

As for certification… you realize that you would learn all this stuff with one good book. I am not certified and have no intention of becoming certified. So far you haven’t mentioned anything that I didn’t know already about Java just from reading the Java tutorials and my old copy of Core Java that only covered Java 1.2. If the certification is motivating you to learn more of the language, that’s a good thing of course. But, if you think stamping “Certified Java Programmer” on your résumé means anything to an employer… don’t get your hopes up.

#38

[quote]i love the labeled breaks. It makes much cleaner, better code in my opinion.
[/quote]
(nb: in the specific situation referenced…)

That’s a really good point. Interesting, because every time I’ve found myself in that situation, I’ve always found a simple refactoring that avoided that situation. Each time, I hope that getting into that trap means you’re probably contorting yourself around some minor flaw in your original design, and that you can correct the flaw and escape. Each time (so far!) I’ve been lucky, and it’s worked. I have occasionally wondered if it’s not luck, but fact; it would be interesting to try and prove that every situation where this happens has a simple refactoring to escape it…

Definitely.

#39

It was tongue-in-cheek (partially ;)), but IIRC gotos are included mainly because of situations like SWP highlights: no-one was quite sure whether lack of gotos would force you into very bad programming practice in the occasional rare situation where they were needed, despite the fact that it was known they were unnecessary (i.e. you could always avoid them - but would it require unwieldy code to do so?).

I have a knee-jerk reaction against them because they make the basic compiler-optimizations harder (irrelevant these days when the JVM is so good at optimizing in many other ways), and because the paradigm is a nightmare to comprehend in someone else’s code, unless they are kind to you or use them VERY sparingly. Like Perl - easy to write, easy to inadvertently make very difficult to read. On the whole, better not to even think about them 99% of the time.

(which is why I’m interested that SWP finds good use for them in those 1% of the time, whereas I’ve managed so far to avoid them without jumping through hoops…)

#40

Following on from the point about stuff you could learn from a book I would say that although you could learn all of that from a book but in my experience doing the exams mostly works as an incentive to actually pick up some books and do some reading rather than putting them to one side and getting back to writing code.