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PhpBlackBelt.com
Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 9:45 am
by Jrizzo
Hi,
I'm John Rizzo, the founder of
http://www.JavaBlackBelt.com
It's a platform for mass collaboration on building (and passing) exams.
We plan to do
PhpBlackBelt.com.
I don't know much about PhP (I fear I'm a Java guy). I think there is a "Zend Certification".
Is there an interest for community driven exam/certification effort in the PhP World ?
The first step is to find one or two editors: PHP specialists with some editorial
and pedagogical skills.
Their first job is to list the interesting exams that match PHP professionals reality. Basic example:
- PHP Basic exam
- HTML Basic exam
- MySQL Basic exam
- OO Basic exam
- PHP Intermed exam
- SQL Basic exam
- ....
Then, for each exam, clear objectives must be written.
Then it's crystal simple: just wait for people to create questions on-line and moderate them.
So my question is: "is there an interest in the PHP community that would justify an effort from us in
http://www.PhpBlackBelt.com ?"
Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 9:59 am
by acidHL
It's actually an interesting idea but what credibility would the result have?
I mean, have employers heard of JavaBlackBelt

Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 10:03 am
by neophyte
I think it would be cool. I've been thinking about creating series of quizzes and so forth in my study for the PHP Zend Exam.
Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 10:09 am
by neophyte
acidHL wrote:It's actually an interesting idea but what credibility would the result have?
I mean, have employers heard of JavaBlackBelt

No, employers have not heard of "BlackBelt" coding but if it helped me passed Zend or some other Cert that would be enough reason for me to participate.
Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 10:16 am
by Jrizzo
acidHL wrote:It's actually an interesting idea but what credibility would the result have?
I mean, have employers heard of JavaBlackBelt

Very good remark!
We've been working on the platform for 2 years.
Now it's ready and we start working on the content and credibility aspect. There are many means.
The questions are created/commented/edited by thousands of people.
They are ranked (votes) also. It's not just one or two guys who propose questions. These are exams built by the community.
There is a complex moderation process to help improve quality.
We start having well known Java gurus (book authors, conference speakers) reviewing and giving their opinion on exams.
The belt logos will appear on some forum web-sites (e.g.: Javalobby.org for JavaBlackBelt), it's a feature under construction.
There are other means but I don't want to be too long on this.
Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 10:19 am
by pilau
neophyte wrote:No, employers have not heard of "BlackBelt" coding but if it helped me passed Zend or some other Cert that would be enough reason for me to participate.
I have to agree. I'm still too young for it (I'm in the 12th grade, yeah, school), but I know that when I finish school and leave the army I will search for a job on something I know and interested in. Which is PHP. I'm sure there are plenty of people who are looking to get a certificate from Zend or at least pass some tests to join a company as PHP developers. It's no secret the PHP is a very popular and powerful programming language.
Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 10:22 am
by Jrizzo
No, employers have not heard of "BlackBelt" coding but if it helped me passed Zend or some other Cert that would be enough reason for me to participate.
That was an idea behind JavaBlackBelt also. At the beginning, we got existing questions from Sun Certification mock exams (around 800). Now, there are 3200 questions in the DB, covering areas that are far further than the Sun Java certifications.
The "Java SE - Basic exam", for example, is much easier than the SCJP (Sun) certification and is a kind entry point for SCJP students.
The "Java XML Programming - Basic exam", as another example, covers some JDom and StAX stuff that is covered in no certification that I know.
We can have a "Zend Certification - Mock exam", for example.
Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 10:26 am
by Jrizzo
neophyte wrote:I think it would be cool. I've been thinking about creating series of quizzes and so forth in my study for the PHP Zend Exam.
If you have some content, neophyte, we can create a "PHP" category/exam on
http://www.JavaBlackBelt.com as a starting point and give you a moderator's access.
If the content grows, we'll do the necessary programming work to have a
http://www.PhpBlackBelt.com site apart.
Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 10:52 am
by onion2k
Certainly a very interesting idea. I'm not sure how useful it'd be to see it on a CV though. I wouldn't trust someone not to work through the questions collaboratively with other developers .. and I'd need to know if the individual applicant could pass on his/her own. There'd be no harm in having it on a CV of course .. I'm just saying that as an employer I don't think I'd pay it much heed. I certainly don't when I see Brainbench.com certifications listed on a CV.
However..
One way it definitely could be extremely useful would be if there was a way I could sit someone down during a job interview and have them work through 25 or 50 questions on the spot .. perhaps from a pool of questions that aren't available to the public .. and have then print a report on their answers (percentage correct, time taken, etc). Perhaps by logging into my "employer area", creating a new applicant or a new job position, and then the applicant could work through the questions .. that way I could see a list of applicants and compare their scores..
Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 10:59 am
by Chris Corbyn
If you're planning on doing this for a fair few languages I'd advise that you buy all the domains asap because I can almost guarantee that some squatter will steal them otherwise

Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 11:08 am
by Jrizzo
d11wtq wrote:If you're planning on doing this for a fair few languages I'd advise that you buy all the domains asap because I can almost guarantee that some squatter will steal them otherwise

Thank you for the advice. We've bought many of them one year ago.
Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 11:11 am
by pilau
Jrizzo wrote:d11wtq wrote:If you're planning on doing this for a fair few languages I'd advise that you buy all the domains asap because I can almost guarantee that some squatter will steal them otherwise

Thank you for the advice. We've bought many of them one year ago.
LMAO

Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 11:18 am
by Jrizzo
onion2k wrote:I wouldn't trust someone not to work through the questions collaboratively with other developers .. and I'd need to know if the individual applicant could pass on his/her own.
Yes, it's a concern that we have. Our experience is that very few people cheat, and we have different mechanism to make cheating not easy. There is a description how there:
http://www.javablackbelt.com/jbb/WikiPa ... utCheating
onion2k wrote:One way it definitely could be extremely useful would be if there was a way I could sit someone down during a job interview and have them work through 25 or 50 questions on the spot .. perhaps from a pool of questions that aren't available to the public .. and have then print a report on their answers (percentage correct, time taken, etc). Perhaps by logging into my "employer area", creating a new applicant or a new job position, and then the applicant could work through the questions .. that way I could see a list of applicants and compare their scores..
Good idea!
We've done that for the Belgian gov last year.
It's useful for job applicants, and also for skills followup.
Imagine you have a team of 200 programmers. You can get, through project leaders, some "efficiency ranking". But it's very difficult to have an objective view of who knows what and the speed of progress. I would be nice if you could agree with each programmer, which exam they plan to succeed within the next 6 month (= which skills they plan to gain) and follow this up on the web.