Certification Magazine - December 2007 - (Page 13) tion from Zend suffice in fulfilling this requirement? Thank you.’ “Here is the response I received from CIW: ‘Although we are working on revisions to our CIW certification program, at this point, we do not have the resources to incorporate PHP technologies into our CIW exams and certifications. We have not seen the market demand to justify this investment so far. I’m sorry we’re not able to meet your requirements.’” Forum member cpattersonv1 had this to say: “Unlike PHP and ASP.NET, Perl is a programming language. Network administrators have been using Perl for years to perform operating system functions in UNIX and now in Windows 2003. There are many more testable things in Perl that can be learned in a specific way. PHP and ASP.NET use a scripting engine (interpreter) to execute code, whereas Perl uses a compiler and compiles code for execution. For the Web, Perl (the language) uses a common gateway interface or CGI that allows the server to treat Perl (the script) as a scripting language. “Perl is very much in use today. I feel PHP and ASP. NET change so frequently that there would be no point in providing certifications in small revisions of the scripting languages when main functionality may change tomorrow, as in PHP 4 to PHP 5 or PHP 3 to PHP 4. Further, depending on where you are working, it doesn’t matter what certification you would have if you are not able to write PHP or ASP.NET script as a developer. Your employer would see right through it. “Certifications are meant to show an understanding of a concept at a certain point in time. With systems applications where someone uses the same functionality to perform industry-standard tasks, this is acceptable. In my opinion, in a scripting environment where creativity is rewarded by the community, the act of standardizing the creative process of Web site programming by requiring certain skills for a certification might hurt more than help.” How to finance an IT education —particularly certifications — is a big issue for IT professionals (it was the subject of our September cover story). Regular forum contributor masterssullivan put the matter to our General Discussion board, asking other IT professionals how they pay for certifications: “How do all of you go about paying for new certifications? The study materials and the tests always put a huge dent in my pocketbook. Usually, the certs pay for themselves, but in the meantime, I find myself having to put things on eBay to afford it!” Career Development No disrespect to tech support, but among IT positions, it tends to be one from which people look to transition. Our Career Development discussion board recently saw a posting from a person looking to do just that. In a thread titled “HELP — stuck in tech support,” new member tech_ladi writes: “I am trying to transition out of tech support, but I’m having a problem finding the right direction. I have a bachelor’s degree in CIS and several Microsoft certifications. I’m thinking about getting CCNA- or UNIX-certified. I’m trying to determine which path I should take that would allow me to move on without the actual hands-on experience. Anyone else successfully leave tech support, and how did you do it?” Forum member cpattersonv1 had this to say: “IT is a hands-on career path. You learn IT every day you’re working because something somewhere automatically sends you a patch that you can’t remove. Or someone in your office finds an undocumented setting that they can change within their permissions that brings their system to its knees with a blue screen error, so you spend an hour realizing it’s a driver setting for video after running system diagnostics. You have to have a hands-on knowledge of the systems to troubleshoot the issues that arise where there are no certifications available. Canned responses to classroom situations for the most part only work in the classrooms. “By adding new hardware, you can change the dynamic of a system that is well-documented with something that is undocumented. Let’s say you install a new firewall that filters all traffic on port 80, and now you can’t authenticate some of your higherend software licenses because the new firewall blocks their licensing rootkits. If there’s no certification available for the firewall, then you would have to have hands-on experience. It’s not like Monopoly, where you get to zip around the board. Everybody in life would do things the non-hands-on way if there was such a thing. Good luck.” Have anything to add or just want to post a thread of your own? Head over to www.certmag.com/forums and let us know! We love to hear from you. 8 – Daniel Margolis, dmargolis@certmag.com December 2007 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE 13 http://www.certmag.com/forums
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.