Anyone who knows Perl is probably aware of Stonehenge and your contribution(s) to Perl.

Why would Stonhenge have more credibility than Brainbench? The latter seems to be a legitimate company, whose focus happens to be certification. If you mean because more people in the Perl community have heard of Stonehenge than Brainbench, you miss the point of certifications: being able to demonstrate your technical ability to non-technical people, via a standardized objective, third-party test. Not trying to knock either company (I happen to think pretty highly of them both), just pointing out that one having more "credibility" than the other is a silly statement.

I would think (as a potential employer) that a company which specializes in online certifications would not be as demonstrative as a company known for Perl training in ensuring that those who are certified have practiced their skills rather than simply regurgitate the knowledge from books and documentation.

Don't get me wrong, though... the test at Brainbech was't a walk in the park but I was able to pass the exam a couple of years ago when I was still new to the language simply by having the book handy.

NOTE:
I wasn't trying to knock Brainbench. I just think that even non-technical people have technical people to use as resources. Most people haven't even heard of Brainbech (technical and non-technical).

Scenario

• You mention your certification on your CV
• You get the interview
• You explain that your certification came from a prominent Perl training/consulting firm (mention "Learning Perl")
• You get the position
Mick

What are the contents of $foo after the following:

my $foo = "bar\n";
undef $/;
chomp $foo;
[download]

Jeff

R-R-R--R-R-R--R-R-R--R-R-R--R-R-R--
L-L--L-L--L-L--L-L--L-L--L-L--L-L--

brainbench has much nastier questions. I was forced to take their test by my employer a couple of months ago when i got my new job. Most of the questions are easy, but some require standard module knowledge and funky regex stuff. Surprisingly, the test rules allow to use on-line documentation (e.g. perldoc). The amount of time you're given, anyone can get a 5.0. Just for the hell of it, I decided not to use documentation and got almost a 4 (and, ultimately, the job).

As for Perl certifications, it is a waste, IMO.

The better you do, the harder the questions. I took it without knowing I was allowed to use online docs over a year ago. OK, I did it dead tired (while trying to stay up and finish laundry) and I was less experienced then, but I only got 4.5. (5 on theory, 4 on "practical questions". Bah.)

Anyways, when it comes up with questions like, "Where do lexical variables live in the symbol table?", good luck getting the answer if you didn't know that already. (I got it of course.)

Do you have any idea if O'Reilly is interested in starting certifications, not just in Perl. It would seem that they have several things going for them:

Access to published experts in various fields (the authors they have worked with)

A well known name so that their certifications would mean something

Big enough name that people would go, plus in the end it's just more free advertising (and book sales)

=Blue
...you might be eaten by a grue...

This, however, presents the rather serious problem of subjectivity. What makes something "creative"? What makes one solution more creative than another? Unless you could come up with an objective standard for determining the creativity of a solution to a problem, awarding something that should be objective, like a certification, becomes meaningless.
~Cybercosis

People interested in Perl Certification might be interested in spending time on the Perl Certification Wiki.

I'm sure Tim Maher would appreciate more input - especially with misanthropes like myself spreading my certification scepticism all over the place :-)

++ .. But I think PerlMonks is seen be a larger audience and is more influential. :)