The IT world is full of certifications. When I started in the tech world, CompTIA’s A+ certification was the standard for computer techs and the Microsoft’s MCSE certification showed you were a master of the Windows system admin world. Today, the IT world has numerous certifications available to indicate proficiency in networking, system administration, hardware, security, application proficiency, and so forth. The world also has numerous programming certifications now too. Two of the more well known certifications include Microsoft’s MCSD and Oracle’s Java certifications. But are they as useful A+, MCSE, CEH, or other certifications? I personally don’t think so. In all my days as a software engineer I have never once interviewed a single developer who had any programming certification. I have never had a fellow developer tell me about passing the newest version of a developer certification. I have never been asked by anyone if I’m certified in a programming language. It has literally never once mattered. In the past, I had considered seeking certification as a Java developer. Then I saw the sample test questions. My first thought? If I ever saw this kind of code in real life I would do everything in my power to ensure that the author was immediately fired. The questions test your ability to remember esoteric language rules — not things I want to ever see used in production systems. Many of the questions ask “what is the output of the below code” and provide a code snippet. If you have to ask what the output of a complex code fragment is, you probably wrote it poorly. If I really needed to know, I’d copy the code and run it. None of this is really of any value. So, your brain is a human code compiler — that’s great. But the real questions remain unanswered — do you understand design patterns? Can you decompose complex problems in to proper object models? Can you write maintainable code? Do you have good coding style? Do you document your code? Do you understand networks and databases? When I interview a developer, these are the questions I need answered — not what the output of a horribly convoluted nested loop is.
