Archive for August, 2007

Last month Peter-Paul Koch wrote about a Dutch Guild of Front-End Programmers he is starting. Its purpose is to further professionalise the front-end programming discipline within the Netherlands and improve web design education. The primary means of doing this is by forming a certification body which will certify individual front-end programmers in the fields of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and possibly Flash. Clients can hire certified developers, which will then improve the quality of their websites.

I believe this is misguided certification is the wrong way of achieving this goal.

In the software field, certifications are typically provided by technology vendors, such as Microsoft and Sun. These certifications are a proof of your skills as an individual engineer, for a particular technology. As Microsoft puts it:

The practical expertise that is gained through the certification process provides individuals with the kind of know-how that gets recognized—on the job, among peers, and by future employers.

(Emphasis mine)

Key here is future employers. Like a formal CS education, a Microsoft-issued certificate helps you land a job. It’s the employers looking for the certification, not the employers’ clients. The certification process acts as an early filter for potential hires. I believe the same will happen to the Guild’s certification process.

Peter-Paul wrote in his introduction to the Guild:

(…) Dutch government recently decided that all national ministry sites will have to comply with the Web Guidelines before the end of 2010. Although they have no requirement to do so, quite a few Dutch governmental bodies on all levels have decided or will decide in the near future to comply with the Guidelines.

They have one huge problem: finding standards-aware front-end programmers.

During an April meeting in The Hague, with various stakeholders of the Web Guidelines present, I heard this complaint not once but three times—and every time most attendees nodded wisely bud sadly. I saw this problem coming back in September 2004, so I wasn’t particularly surprised. In fact, I started to see a possible solution: certification.

There are some very knowledgeable and standards-aware groups within branches of the Dutch government (…) Now suppose that these people would, quite unofficially, advise government branches who want to implement the Guidelines to work only with certified front-end programmers? That would give a certificate considerable value.

In fact, if this strategy succeeds it might mean that web companies that work for the government will employ only certified web developers in three or four years time. Government sites would be created only by people who actually know the web standards. Wouldn’t that be interesting?

When you read the above citations closely, you’ll note that a) the government branches are expected to hire web companies who employ certified programmers, and b) that Peter-Paul expects an underground pressure on these branches to only work with such companies. As the French might put it, coup d’etat.

Of course, government websites will eventually have to comply with the guidelines. They will have to work with web companies that can build compliant sites, and these sites themselves will have to be certified with regards to the guidelines. Hiring a Guild-certified programmer, or more precisely the company which employs the programmer, is no guarantee. When I asked him about this at last Thursday’s Guild meeting, Peter-Paul admitted as much.

The advantage of obtaining the certificate for individuals is better chances at employement. For the employer there is easier filtering of job applicants and a marginal advantage in project pitches. Certification does not increase the quality of Dutch web design education, nor does it necessarily improve the quality of websites. Unlike vendor driven certification programmes, the programme that Peter-Paul is proposing requires membership of an organisation. And since there is no certification in the use of a vendor’s technologies, but in open standards whose proper use is continually under debate, the objectiveness of the certification is unclear.

I do believe there’s a need for a professional web designer’s organisation. Pressure needs to be excerted, and a helping hand extended, to improve the quality of (Dutch) web design and education systems. For the reasons outlined above, I do not believe certification should be part of this.

As Peter-Paul wrote, last October:

The main problem with any kind of Web development certification (as well as Web education) is that the industry is moving too fast for official institutions (with their unavoidable bureaucracy) to keep up. Suppose that today we’d set up certification criteria that all experts would agree to be good; before they’re actually implemented by an official body they’d already be outdated. Even if the official body would somehow move with lightning speed, our certification criteria would still be outdated within a year or so.

I wonder what made him change his mind.