Are there any reputable Python certifications?

Question

My company has a policy of encouraging employee training, but want some evidence of quality of training and tangible achievement. Several of our Java developers are taking advantage of this opportunity to go for Sun certifications, which provide a formal way of verifying competence, and will be useful additions to their CVs in the future.

Is there any reputable equivalent certification for Python? I already know basic Python, but being able to show evidence of formal training/ability would be great.

Answer 1

There doesn't appear to be any reputable Python certification exams that I know of, not like the Sun certification exams at least.

Answer 2

ESRI (mapping) runs some python-for-mapping courses, but I can't think of any others.

There are various agile certs available - you don't need to do straight coding.

Or you could send them to courses in the industry. What's your industry? Web design? Finance? Every industry has certification courses, and it would be good for your programmers to have a better idea of what they are doing.

Answer 3

I can't say I know of any formal certificate program for Python. They do list a number of training events you can attend (some free and some not) on the wiki: http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonTraining

My personal take would be that Python is open source and perhaps you could use some of your training time to contribute back. Nothing says I know Python like contributing to the source.

Answer 4

Some firms do offer "Python certification" (I know Brainbench used to, for example -- not sure if they still do), but whether they're worth anything is quite dubious -- I know I'd never rely on any such Python certification to hire an employee, personally (and I've never worked nor consulted for any firm that would). There's a lot of Python training courses, some very good, but whatever certificate you get at the end is basically a certificate of attendance, not of proficiency, so while the courses may be good the certificate isn't worth much, again.