Any interesting CS certifications that are not technology specific?

Question

Are there certification that tests your analytical / logic / math / problem solving skills?

The question popped up while I was considering (for the umpteenth time) at getting a Microsoft certification in .net 3.5 (time killer). However, again, I have not found many people who actually believe it adds any significant credibility - which is in a way true.

But ! I would like to know if there _ are _ any computer science certifications that are valuable? Seems rather strange that Google couldn't help me find any!

Answer 1

Project Euler

Google CodeJam

Joining an Open-Source development project or reading other people's code (download source code for something like Paint.Net)

Answer 2

A bachelors degree, a masters degree, or a Ph.D. in Computer Science are all certifications that are not technology specific that certainly add credibility.

Other than that, most certifications are vendor/platform specific, to help identify those as qualified to install/develop the software. There's not too much of an incentive for generic certifications outside of academia...

Answer 3

Provable experience (contributions to Open Source projects, or verifiable significant contribution to a monetized or otherwise valuable project) by far outshines any certification.

Think of it like benchmarks. There are synthetic benchmarks (that's your certification) - nice to have, but people care about real world benchmarks (that's your experience).

Answer 4

It's not exactly a certification, but Stack Overflow reputation is one measure of your ability to provide good answers (or questions) on programming-related topics!

And, of course, it's all peer-reviewed which (one would hope) lends it a certain credibility.

Answer 5

Almost every CS paper I did at Uni was a non-technology specific CS certification. You can do a few courses at somewhere like the open university if you feel like stretching yourself. If you already have a degree or enough software experience you might be eligible to go straight to a masters course.

Or you could just do a maths degree from somewhere similar. It's something that I have been vaguely considering doing, but there is just so much that you can learn yourself and stretch yourself with in the field of software I don't see myself going in for any formal certifications any time soon.