[Call for Participation]: Haskell Certification Program
Serokell and the Haskell Foundation are excited to announce a community-led Haskell Certification Program (https://certification.haskell.foundation/). Serokell has developed an online testing platform for administering practical and theoretical Haskell problems. Haskell is a complex language, offering a wide range of techniques and features for programmers. It’s simply not feasible for a novice or intermediate programmer to master them all. The goal of the Haskell certification is to help standardize what it means to ‘know Haskell’ at various levels of experience. As a community driven effort, we are soliciting self-nomination for volunteers to take part in the organization and decision-making around the certification process. These volunteers will help determine how the certification process evolves and which questions are relevant to the various experience levels of a Haskell programmer. Volunteers from organizations that use Haskell professionally are especially welcome. Please send your self-nomination to certification@haskell.foundation by the end of July 10th 2024. Best wishes, Jose Calderon
Congrats on launching this. It's probably worth being clear on any potential conflict of interest here with this being an seemingly "official" haskell-foundation sponsored certification and whether or not Serokell is a funder of the HF and/or has seats on the board. I would also suggest it's fairly bold to claim that this is in any way "objective" insofar as no exams are "objective", they merely test the subjective interests, experiences, and skills of the setters, and, crucially, an ability to succeed in exam conditions, which *many* people struggle with, for an extremely large variety of reasons. Your Haskell may be very different from my Haskell. -- Noon On Mon, 24 Jun 2024 at 21:52, Jose Calderon via Haskell-Cafe < haskell-cafe@haskell.org> wrote:
Serokell and the Haskell Foundation are excited to announce a community-led Haskell Certification Program ( https://certification.haskell.foundation/). Serokell has developed an online testing platform for administering practical and theoretical Haskell problems. Haskell is a complex language, offering a wide range of techniques and features for programmers. It’s simply not feasible for a novice or intermediate programmer to master them all. The goal of the Haskell certification is to help standardize what it means to ‘know Haskell’ at various levels of experience.
As a community driven effort, we are soliciting self-nomination for volunteers to take part in the organization and decision-making around the certification process. These volunteers will help determine how the certification process evolves and which questions are relevant to the various experience levels of a Haskell programmer. Volunteers from organizations that use Haskell professionally are especially welcome.
Please send your self-nomination to certification@haskell.foundation by the end of July 10th 2024.
Best wishes,
Jose Calderon _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list To (un)subscribe, modify options or view archives go to: http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe Only members subscribed via the mailman list are allowed to post.
-- Noon van der Silk http://silky.github.io/ "My programming language is kindness."
On 25.06.24 08:01, Noon van der Silk wrote:
I would also suggest it's fairly bold to claim that this is in any way "objective" insofar as no exams are "objective", they merely test the subjective interests, experiences, and skills of the setters, and, crucially, an ability to succeed in exam conditions, which *many* people struggle with, for an extremely large variety of reasons. Your Haskell may be very different from my Haskell.
Still, it's objective in the sense that anybody who comes with a certificate has successfully memorized the information in the course. It's also proof that the candidate had enough interest in Haskell to invest significant time for obtaining a certificate. It's a minimal foundation that employers can assume so they don't have to check that themselves, they can concentrate on other aspects, and it's a known stable foundation, minimal as it may be. Nothing of that is a full picture of a candidate's developer personality, but nothing is anyway. HTH Jo
It's a minimal foundation that employers can assume so they don't have to check that themselves, they can concentrate on other aspects, and it's a known stable foundation, minimal as it may be.
But I think this is the precise problem with it being supported by the HF.
I don't think it's a minimal foundation at all (almost regardless of it's
content).
I think we've learned by now
https://sordina.net/blog/2016/03/26/1458976158-Aesthetic-Isomorphism_and_Hir...,
as a broad programming community, that there's a classical logical fallacy
here - (some) "good" programmers can do well on these exams, but that
*doesn't* mean you *must* complete this well in order to be a "good"
programmer. There's many issues here among them that "good programmer" is
only defined respect to organisational context anyway.
I think it's completely fine and reasonable for a private company
(Serokell) to be offering this certification, especially one such as them
that has real experience in the Haskell ecosystem and plenty of people
contributing; but I think what would be a very bad situation is that if the
HF itself, and the broad Haskell (hiring) ecosystem got the idea that this
was something all candidates should seek achieve. The fact that the HF is
explicitly supporting it, is, for me, a disappointing outcome from a body
that, I had hoped would try and stay (somewhat) independent. Hence asking
for a clarification on any potential conflict of interest here.
--
Noon
On Tue, 25 Jun 2024 at 12:04,
On 25.06.24 08:01, Noon van der Silk wrote:
I would also suggest it's fairly bold to claim that this is in any way "objective" insofar as no exams are "objective", they merely test the subjective interests, experiences, and skills of the setters, and, crucially, an ability to succeed in exam conditions, which *many* people struggle with, for an extremely large variety of reasons. Your Haskell may be very different from my Haskell.
Still, it's objective in the sense that anybody who comes with a certificate has successfully memorized the information in the course.
It's also proof that the candidate had enough interest in Haskell to invest significant time for obtaining a certificate.
It's a minimal foundation that employers can assume so they don't have to check that themselves, they can concentrate on other aspects, and it's a known stable foundation, minimal as it may be.
Nothing of that is a full picture of a candidate's developer personality, but nothing is anyway.
HTH Jo _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list To (un)subscribe, modify options or view archives go to: http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe Only members subscribed via the mailman list are allowed to post.
-- Noon van der Silk http://silky.github.io/ "My programming language is kindness."
On 25.06.24 13:25, Noon van der Silk wrote:
It's a minimal foundation that employers can assume so they don't have to check that themselves, they can concentrate on other aspects, and it's a known stable foundation, minimal as it may be.
But I think this is the precise problem with it being supported by the HF.
I don't think it's a minimal foundation at all (almost regardless of it's content).
Oh but it is. It may be useless, there may be better options, there might be other issues with it. But being able to acquire a certificate in a field IS a foundation.
I think we've learned by now https://sordina.net/blog/2016/03/26/1458976158-Aesthetic-Isomorphism_and_Hir..., as a broad programming community, that there's a classical logical fallacy here - (some) "good" programmers can do well on these exams, but that /doesn't/ mean you *must* complete this well in order to be a "good" programmer. There's many issues here among them that "good programmer" is only defined respect to organisational context anyway.
While the linked article does have a point, it's just one way to look at hiring decisions or engineer performance, and others are just as useful and valid. So, no, not a logical fallacy. Just a different perspective.
I think it's completely fine and reasonable for a private company (Serokell) to be offering this certification, especially one such as them that has real experience in the Haskell ecosystem and plenty of people contributing; but I think what would be a very bad situation is that if the HF itself, and the broad Haskell (hiring) ecosystem got the idea that this was something all candidates should seek achieve.
Nobody is claiming that, and it would be a very unexpected outcome. In practice, a certificate gives you a modicum of street credibility if your CV does not document a background in the area. Regards, Jo P.S.: I do see your point about independence, and agree that's a potential concern.
On Tue, Jun 25, 2024 at 07:01:18AM +0100, Noon van der Silk wrote:
It's probably worth being clear on any potential conflict of interest here with this being an seemingly "official" haskell-foundation sponsored certification and whether or not Serokell is a funder of the HF and/or has seats on the board.
Hello Noon, The HF will hold any proceeds gained from the certification program and put them back into funding the program. Serokell does not financially benefit from this initiative. Regarding board members, you can see who they are on the HF website, and that no employee of Serokell has a board seat (nor has any ever): https://haskell.foundation/who-we-are/ Regarding donors, you can see a list of donors on the HF website front page, and that Serokell does not appear: https://haskell.foundation/ (I don't actually know if that comprises literally all the donors nor all historical donors, but as far as I am aware, Serokell is not one nor has ever been.) Tom (HF Vice Chair)
Hey Tom, Thanks for clarifying the money position.
Serokell does not financially benefit from this initiative.
It's probably worth making this clear in the terms of service or otherwise (as Georgi hinted at). But I would also note that clearly Serokell want their name attached to it; so they definitely do benefit implicitly from the endorsement. I do still think it's a shame that the HF is attempting to adopt this as a somehow "formal" "ability in Haskell measure"; to my simple mind this is a very large overstep for a language's foundation to make; i.e. it should be taken *very* seriously, if HF somehow represents "Haskell" officially. I.e. my only personal course of action is just to assume that it, in fact, does not represent all our interests; which, of course, you will not be surprised, to learn is my true feeling :) But myself aside, I do think some care needs to be taken; i.e. to explain clearly why the HF hasn't chosen to select this as "one among many options"; i.e. just link to it, compared to making it "the" url for certification for Haskell; and likewise writing the content to imply that. -- Noon On Tue, 25 Jun 2024 at 13:20, Tom Ellis < tom-lists-haskell-cafe-2023@jaguarpaw.co.uk> wrote:
On Tue, Jun 25, 2024 at 07:01:18AM +0100, Noon van der Silk wrote:
It's probably worth being clear on any potential conflict of interest here with this being an seemingly "official" haskell-foundation sponsored certification and whether or not Serokell is a funder of the HF and/or has seats on the board.
Hello Noon,
The HF will hold any proceeds gained from the certification program and put them back into funding the program. Serokell does not financially benefit from this initiative.
Regarding board members, you can see who they are on the HF website, and that no employee of Serokell has a board seat (nor has any ever):
https://haskell.foundation/who-we-are/
Regarding donors, you can see a list of donors on the HF website front page, and that Serokell does not appear:
(I don't actually know if that comprises literally all the donors nor all historical donors, but as far as I am aware, Serokell is not one nor has ever been.)
Tom (HF Vice Chair) _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list To (un)subscribe, modify options or view archives go to: http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe Only members subscribed via the mailman list are allowed to post.
-- Noon van der Silk http://silky.github.io/ "My programming language is kindness."
Hey all, I think the TOS are a bit outdated - https://certification.haskell.foundation/terms-of-service. They still refer to certification.serokell.io, which I would assume was once the FQDN of the website, and not https://certification.haskell.foundation/. Additionally, is it not possible for "legal ownership" (whatever that means, I'm not too knowledgeable) of this project to be transferred to the Foundation? Cheers and good luck, Georgi On 6/24/24 23:51, Jose Calderon via Haskell-Cafe wrote:
Serokell and the Haskell Foundation are excited to announce a community-led Haskell Certification Program (https://certification.haskell.foundation/). Serokell has developed an online testing platform for administering practical and theoretical Haskell problems. Haskell is a complex language, offering a wide range of techniques and features for programmers. It’s simply not feasible for a novice or intermediate programmer to master them all. The goal of the Haskell certification is to help standardize what it means to ‘know Haskell’ at various levels of experience.
As a community driven effort, we are soliciting self-nomination for volunteers to take part in the organization and decision-making around the certification process. These volunteers will help determine how the certification process evolves and which questions are relevant to the various experience levels of a Haskell programmer. Volunteers from organizations that use Haskell professionally are especially welcome.
Please send your self-nomination to certification@haskell.foundation by the end of July 10th 2024.
Best wishes,
Jose Calderon
_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list To (un)subscribe, modify options or view archives go to: http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe Only members subscribed via the mailman list are allowed to post.
This is a somewhat related topic, but I do not know of a forum to discuss it. Hence apologies if the relation is too remote. In her book "The Programmer’s Brain" (Manning, 2021) Felienne Hermans (who knows Haskell) says, among other things, that reserved words like "while" and so on act as *cognitive anchors* which support our brains in learning programming languages by giving a familiar foothold in the early steps. Haskell has none of that: not even a strict division of syntactic structures for representing control vs. data - because it does not have it in its semantics either. What (if anything) does that portend to learning Haskell? To teaching it? To assessing the learner's progress? (And why didn't I think of these things when I was still teaching it myself?) ma 24. kesäk. 2024 klo 23.52 Jose Calderon via Haskell-Cafe < haskell-cafe@haskell.org> kirjoitti:
Serokell and the Haskell Foundation are excited to announce a community-led Haskell Certification Program ( https://certification.haskell.foundation/). Serokell has developed an online testing platform for administering practical and theoretical Haskell problems. Haskell is a complex language, offering a wide range of techniques and features for programmers. It’s simply not feasible for a novice or intermediate programmer to master them all. The goal of the Haskell certification is to help standardize what it means to ‘know Haskell’ at various levels of experience.
As a community driven effort, we are soliciting self-nomination for volunteers to take part in the organization and decision-making around the certification process. These volunteers will help determine how the certification process evolves and which questions are relevant to the various experience levels of a Haskell programmer. Volunteers from organizations that use Haskell professionally are especially welcome.
Please send your self-nomination to certification@haskell.foundation by the end of July 10th 2024.
Best wishes,
Jose Calderon _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list To (un)subscribe, modify options or view archives go to: http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe Only members subscribed via the mailman list are allowed to post.
On Tue, Jun 25, 2024 at 2:19 PM Matti Nykänen < matti.johannes.nykanen@gmail.com> wrote:
In her book "The Programmer’s Brain" (Manning, 2021) Felienne Hermans (who knows Haskell) says, among other things, that reserved words like "while" and so on act as *cognitive anchors* which support our brains in learning programming languages by giving a familiar foothold in the early steps.
Haskell has none of that: not even a strict division of syntactic structures for representing control vs. data - because it does not have it in its semantics either.
What (if anything) does that portend to learning Haskell? To teaching it? To assessing the learner's progress?
This is something we already know about: that Haskell is a very different language from procedural or OO languages. The cognitive anchors are very different. (It's also not new: in some OO languages, many of these are methods instead of keywords.) Which asks a different question: just how fundamental are these anchors to begin with? Which is also a question in many other disciplines which are starting to expand beyond Western-dominated viewpoints. (For example, a fairly major assumption about how human brains process musical chords was recently struck down by careful research into non-Western musical motifs and how native listeners perceive them.) -- brandon s allbery kf8nh allbery.b@gmail.com
participants (7)
-
Brandon Allbery -
Georgi Lyubenov -
jo＠durchholz.org -
Jose Calderon -
Matti Nykänen -
Noon van der Silk -
Tom Ellis