Is it important to get a PCEP Certificate?
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I am a physics student and I almost finished my third year (I am in sixth semesters ). So I am trying to learn python. I still did not try to learn classes but other than that I know the other stuff in general. I am solving problems here and at Project Euler (which I solved 83 problems in there). I am also reading "Learning Python" to improve my skills and learn more about the syntax classes etc.
Next semester I'll apply some places to do an internship. Also, I want to work as an astrophysicist in the future. And as we all know coding is an important skill in the area. Also most likely I' ll go abroad for graduate school. (At least I 'll try)
In this case, is it important to get a PCEP Certificate to show my skills?
Or is it enough if I open a GitHub page and upload my projects/codes?
Hi there!
This is a popular and interesting question :)
At least I myself, not as admin here, but as a fellow coder was a beginner some years ago, at least beginner in Java. And there are several official certificates in Java - they require some preparation and also considerable fee.
So you may see, I think I understand the question, right? :)
I even tried to prepare for java certification. However I never tried to get it. I get employed before I made my mind and then found that many guru colleagues do not esteem "official certificates" high.
The problem is these certifications usually require you to pass some test, which requires sometimes deep enough knowledge of language (say, Python) syntax and internals - but this cannot guarantee you can really write sane code! Certificate definitely shows the person has some devotion, but nothing more.
So the existing situation is like this - at some projects customer may request that among employees there are certain amount of certified specialists. Then they pass exam at the expence of employer or customer. This may be important in some legal cases for example. But nothing more.
When I myself am interviewing / assessing some candidate - I definitely am more interested to know his/her "professional portfolio" - i.e. what kind of projects person have participated in, what developed himself etc.
Github is really a thing. Though it is not necessary to put any stuff here. Or at least if there are already too many (like in mine - I often save some useful project templates here or some stillborn projects) - don't forget to give links to your most "outstanding" projects :)
Also I dare say - if you really is going to work in science, it is definitely somewhat different from being hired to casual IT-company. I suspect your "portfolio" may be expected to have some projects related to scientific researches - or even co-authoring some articles. Here are different requirements to programming for research, for science - than to commercial development - so probably you may better invest your time in getting some certificates from Coursera in the field between science and programming (e.g. anything between datascience and robotics). Courses on bigdata and algorithms may be also useful as I vaguely know that datasets in your preferred field are definitely large.
E.g. knowing how to run Python in Spark is 10 times more valuable to you than certificate on general Python.
Several of my classmates are physicists, one of them astrophysicist. He writes tons of formulas, does some computing sometimes - but I won't be surprised if he uses Matlab/Octave and his favorite Pascal still. Though I will ask when I see him :)
Sorry for bit too many letters, but hopes at least some of these thoughts may be useful! And good luck - definitely it would be interesting to learn in future what are you working at :)
I think I was a bit of fan of astronomy at least in past... Asimov's "The Exploding Suns" is still one of my favorite popular-science books.
Hey Rodion. Thank for your wonderful thoughts and sparing time to answer my question.
I think you are right. It would be useless for me to get a certificate on the subject. As you said I 'll be not looking for jobs at IT companies.
Recently, I got interested in machine-learning because it's used in astrophysics and it is also cool. I searched for some sites on how to learn. However, as you said I don't have any experience in data science or python stuff in that area. So I guess I should start to study data science in python.
I can grab some python books related to them and start to read. Do you have any suggestions about books or maybe some sites?
In Codeabbey there are I guess 2 astrophysics problems which one of them contains machine-learning. Maybe after learning something related to data science etc. I can try that :)
Other than physics problems here (which they are great) do you know any physics-based project-sites or books?
I 'll also try to do some computer work related to the cosmology In the university as project homework. Which that will be the "big project" for me.
And good luck - definitely it would be interesting to learn in future what are you working at :)
Thank you :)
I think I was a bit of fan of astronomy at least in past... Asimov's "The Exploding Suns" is still one of my favorite popular-science books.
I have not read that book. I am actually more interested in cosmology. But more are nice :)
I think cosmology/astrophysics is one of the coolest areas in physics.
Several of my classmates are physicists, one of them astrophysicist. He writes tons of formulas, does some computing sometimes - but I won't be surprised if he uses Matlab/Octave and his favorite Pascal still. Though I will ask when I see him :) Thank you, that would be great
I think, it's important to know coding as a physicist.