Condescending? Who, me?

About my previous post on Certification Exams, Andrew Duthie commented in his blog that:

"...I find this attitude just a little condescending."

Now, if it were the part about the backlash to the initials that he found condescending, no problem: I was merely pointing out that it's now a time-honored position to take. But my careful reading of his post tells me that he's either commenting on my French ("Plus ca change, plus ca mem chose"") or my critique of the WOSA exams ("Those exams were pretty pointless anyway.")

Frankly, I think Andrew misread what I wrote and - in case he's not alone - I think I need to set the record straight. I did not say all exams were pointless. I did not say certification was pointless. What I did say was that I felt those two Windows Architecture exams were pointless. Over the years I've heard dozens of people say the same thing, so it's not just me. Hey, if someone wants to defend a bunch of questions about extended memory architecture, CONFIG.SYS settings, and crap like that, now's the chance to chime in.

FWIW, certification's been "berra berra" good to me too.  I've worked on a half dozen of the exams, starting with the VB3 one which I did entirely myself. Ironically, Microsoft even hired me to run tutoring sessions at VBITS - the first place it was offered publicly - to make sure that people did well.