RE: certificates and the current job market

["Richard Smith" <Richard -dot- Smith -at- windriver -dot- com>]

Here's my opinion.

You can learn plenty about web graphics from online resources. There are
some pretty good tutorials on www.webmonkey.com about graphic formats,
optimizing, display resolution issues, and so forth. I don't know if
imageready has a demo, but Fireworks does. Both are good tools for a variety
of web graphic optimizing tasks. Someone mentioned gIMP and image magik,
which are free and also very good. That said, I'd bet most of what a TW
needs can be done with a prog like snagit. Don't spend your tuition money
here.

As for site design, I suspect this would be of more use if you are employed
doing something directly related. Like building a site, documenting such a
process, or documenting an application related to content management/site
design. This could be useful, but I think the programming cert is your best
bet. Here's why.

Once you learn programming concepts, and can write functional basic programs
in one language, you have a foundation to learn other languages more
quickly. Of the three choices, I think it's the best building block. As for
it's value, I have no hard statistics. But I've seen comments in this forum
that indicate a TW who knows code will have an easier time finding jobs,
have an easier time keeping jobs, and likely earn more that they could
without that knowledge. Yes the comments are anecdotal, but they do pop up
here frequently, and don't seem to get refuted.



Richard Smith



> What do you think? Would I be "in demand" with a programming certificate
> passed pass/fail, which would mean a better understanding of
> programming but
> no real ability to program?


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