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Comment by povertyworld | Hacker News Reader

But then people will just memorize for the test. We've all seen the IT guys who crammed for some certification, but don't know anything.

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I imagine that if you're cramming for a test on how to do differential equations, and you're able to pass that test, you actually know how to solve differential equations.

"IT People" cramming for tests and memorizing the test for those certifications is a testament to the failure of those certifications, not for certifications in general.

That is a problem with particular certification exams, not insurmountable at all. E.g. memorizing brain dumps for Microsoft MSCE is one thing, but that trick does not work for the CCIE.

Is the CCIE one of the "hands on" exams, like the Red Hat and Kubernetes exams?

I have less familiarity with the Red Hat and Kubernetes exams, but yes -- the CCIE is a lab exam. Started out at two days but IIRC it is currently at one full eight-hour day in the lab. We have a few CCIEs where I work and the amount of studying to earn the certification is phenominal. The overall pass rate is about roughly 25%, which is notably low.

I've done the California "Fundamentals of Engineering" Civil Engineering exam long time ago and it was no joke. Its been a while but I think they let you bring reference books or gave you one. You really had to know your stuff because you had no time to look at the reference material.

The test for e.g. programming could be "build a program to do X", where X is determined on the spot, and you have e.g. 6 hours to do it on premise...

Memorization wont help with that...

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