ROS Monday Vol.8

I can see the interest in getting certificates. After all, our online ROS Academy provides certificates to certify the ROS level of each student. We can see the high interest from our students.

However, I do not believe in certificates. In my opinion, certificates are a thing of the past, and we will get rid of them in the near future.

What really matters is what the person is capable of doing, and that is difficult to asses with a certificate. Instead, the real skills of an individual are easily discovered by checking the person’s public repo and asking him questions about his development there.

A certificate can say anything (as long as you pay), but asking about your repo? That shows the real thing! In the end, it is your real work that certifies your level.

Additionally, subjects change so quickly that a certificate in a given subject may mean nothing in 3 years. For instance, having a certificate in ROS-1 now may mean nothing in 3 years when ROS-2 becomes the standard.

If you want to start in the robotics development field, my advice is that you start as soon as possible to build your own repo of robotics projects. Learn as much as possible and then create your own projects, modify existing ones, collaborate with other developers… Build that base of work, and then show it to the world. Create a YouTube channel to show your results, allow people to reproduce your results, and share your code.

Just to practice what I preach, I’m sharing my repo with many ROS projects right here: https://rds.theconstructsim.com/r/ricardo_tellez/

And don’t forget to keep yourself updated. Fields change so fast.

Ricardo

July 27, 2020 in Barcelona

P.S. I understand some very specific jobs require you to have specific certificates or titles to apply to them (mostly when related to jobs at universities or for the government). If your aim is to apply to those, then forget what I mentioned above and go after your certificates!