OpenJS Foundation Node + JS Interactive 2019, 11 May 2020

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From YouTube: Keynote: Node Certifications Detailed Overview - David Clements & Adrian Estrada

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Keynote: Node Certifications Detailed Overview - David Clements, Principal Architect, NearForm & Adrian Estrada, VP of Engineering, NodeSource
Speakers: Adrian Estrada, David Clements

A

Okay, I'm Dave I'm.

B

From near form, a I'm Adrienne, I work for motors and with.

A

Super excited to share what we've been working on for quite some time with the open Jas foundation. It's the note, certifications with an S spoiler.

B

Alert yeah. We have been working together for a year on this project. Here we have the URL for the certification. You want more information about this. Stop you can take a picture if you want, you can visit this link later. So, let's start from the beginning, it really takes a community. This was born as a community, for this was born at this very same conference. We are right now that was announcing in 2016 were Tracy hands. Did the initial kick star of this project?

B

Here we are seeing some faces of the community involved in this project. So I'm, sorry, if I'm missing someone there I promise, I will put the picture back. If you reached me later so yeah thanks to the community for helping with this not.

A

Only was it a cross community effort, it's also became across organizational effort, and these are the organizations involved near form. The company I'm working with in a technical and authoring capacity, node source provided prop, provides operational support and reviewing open Jas is the leadership coordination in the certifying body psi for proctoring, which we're going to get into a little bit more later and true ability are the remote exam platform.

A

So why a certification? And why now well?

A

In my opinion, the the industry has- has got to a sort of a maturation point where it's grown over the years to being becoming much more involved in a larger scale projects and in the attack industry in general. We have demand versus availability issue, the demand is high and the availability can be difficult.

A

So what we need is a kind of an optimization where we can standardize a verification of skill level and that's what we're doing with these certifications, and it's also about opportunity creation, where we can open doors to allow people to come via other routes than the typical, because, as I said, there is a demand versus availability issue.

A

So the the certification was kicked off as Adrian said in 2016 in Austin, and we had a group of people from across the industry. We had no source and near from there. There was also a belief, Walmart Netflix, Go Daddy tinnies nodding I, forgive me for, but on anyone tinnie was there yeah.

B

He was actually word, you know there was the avatar yeah, so.

A

In in Austin, we we decided upon these principles that the Civic ation should be outcome, focused that it should be framework and library agnostic, that it should support real world practices that it was problem-solving over puzzle solving. So we wanted to try to distill it down to actually solving problems that you would face in everyday life rather than just technical conundrums, and we also wanted to not care about how it was implemented, just that it was that it sold whatever problem was being presented in terms of Quality, Assurance certification.

A

All of the questions have been peer. Reviewed by industry. Leaders include an Adrian, but also, if you may know, Mateus, Booz, Charlie, Robbins or Luca Morosky. These are all you know very technical people that are reviewed. It was also alpha tested in a sort of freeform feedback way. It was be tested with around 150 testers, and when we started off in Austin in 2016, we also had a psychometrician guiding as regarding the topics and the domains and how to break things up and before we went live.

A

It also went for a final psychometric review with a few more tweaks.

A

In terms of the certification having long term integrity as in making it so that it's not easy to commoditize from a from a cheating aspect, there is variance you don't necessarily get the same exact questions every time you take it. It's proctored by humans, we're also going to have release cycles, we're going to keep it up to date, which we'll talk about more later, and we also have the ability to sample any captured sessions and review them.

B

So now we are going to discuss a little bit. A word is actually to take a certification test.

B

So here are the exam expectations for you. You will be taking the test using a remote decima environment. This will work in a processor tap, so you will use a browser to actually solve the test. It will be remotely Proctor ed, so you will have a real human. You know, checking the webcam and checking the desktop everything you are doing for the test, so you can use any tool that you want any echos. You know any library that you prefer to solve the problems as they already explained. We are checking for their results.

B

We are not checking for the process you will do to accomplish. You know the solution and you can use any online resource, so you can use the no documentation wherever you want, but not the Stack, Overflow or related sides, because we are, we don't want you to be copying and pasting. You know code in the machine, so yeah you are you. You will get resources to. You know to remember how to solve anything, but you can't copy and paste the code, so this beautiful machine it will be a desktop leanness.

B

It will be mati, so you have to be a little bit familiar with this. You will have Visual Studio code beam too. So you know as a color editors, you will have postman, so you can check the solution for your restful. Api is questions you have. You will have main terminal and Visual Studio code terminal and you will have chrome as the default browser, so here's a screenshot about machine. This is how it actually looks at the beginning of the test. You will receive instructions in this initial screen.

B

You will have a timer at the corner. As you can see, you will have two hours to solve the test. Every test and yeah. You basically will read all the instructions in this tab and you will use code or beam wherever you prefer to actually solve this. So let's discuss a little bit about the exam so preview, so they already say that we have two certifications. We have not GES applications developer and we have not J a service developer. So, let's discuss.

A

So the node application developer exam is about assessing your effectiveness, creating any type of node.js application. So the way that we did, that is, we took an intersection of use cases and skills that would be required and we test those rather than testing. You know X application, Y application. So, theoretically, by taking this exam, you should be verified at a basic fundamental level for overall competency with serve creating servers. Creating you know, desktop applications, all the things that Mars was actually talking about before this is this is what we're testing for.

A

This is basic fundamental nodejs knowledge in terms of being able to use no GS, you you can use the core API or you can use libraries. It doesn't matter whether you use ecosystem or core. The point is: can you wield it effectively to create any type of application? The only thing that's missing from the node application developer exam is the domains around servers because so later let me let me come back for that is I should have gone over this more yeah fundamental concepts.

A

It covers common use cases, key transferable skills, everything I just said, and it smart on out comes an API knowledge, its load library and framework agnostic in the node application developer exam. There's lots of small questions. There are about five to ten minutes, each that's different to the other one and there's 13 topic domains.

A

Here's the his secret sauce. Those are the things you need to know and those are the waiting's for them, and here's a horrific colorful monstrosity for you to enjoy with those in a pie chart as well as I was saying. The only thing that isn't there is the service stuff, because so.

B

We have no J's service developer certification. This is a total different certification. Let's move this will test.

B

Let's move to the next one yeah, so this will test practical effectiveness using node.js for real common problems, creating servers and Kreator and restful api s', so OOP, so you will be creating basically servers, press, PLAY, pis and testing your security practices around these applications. So you will find this. This is way different. You will have like a small set of questions, but every question will definitely take some time. So every question will take you between 15 to 30 minutes.

B

So you definitely need to code like a regular node.js web application restful api and you can use whatever you want. We already said that you can use Express, you can use AC peak or you can you specify that you know just join the foundation? That's nice! So it's basically two broad domains. We have servers and services which is 70% of the test and security practices around this kind of application. That is 2% of the test. So to pass of this certification, you will need to score at least 68%.

B

I know it looks a little bit low, but you know it's tricky. It's actually really complex. You really need preparation for this. You really need to study be prepared, but don't worry if you fail to score 68%, we have a free retake. So if you, you know, misses the first time, then you the second one you can actually you know, be familiar with the test and take another chance to pass.

A

So now we come to the issue of pricing. What's it going to cost you when the certification was first launched in October, so some some people might be aware that there was some pushback on the price at that time, which is very fair. The the problem with setting a price, a global price is that socioeconomic status, even in the same country and around the world they differ.

A

So we wanted to do this, as I said earlier, as a door opening exercise not as a gatekeeping exercise, so the exam price as it stands is $300 per example, certification per per certification yeah. So in terms of addressing that potential imbalance for some people that $300 is totally affordable for companies that want to have employees certified. So that's staying for that purpose, but it's not affordable for everyone.

A

So when we initially launched certification, Robin wrote a blog post, which you can find here. There was a response to some of the concerns around pricing and how we might be able to address that moving forward. So one of the key ways that the the foundation wants to address this moving forward is with scholarships specifically scholarships partnering with other organizations that represent specific groups of people that the organization that the foundation can grant sets of scholarships too. In order to do that, we really need the four people to start talking to each other.

A

So if you do represent an organization or a group in in Canada in the US or anywhere around the world, please come talk to me. Come to us Adrian come talk to Robin you from that blog post. You can find Robins email. You can email her because we'd really like to start moving with this and making sure that we can make this available available to as many people as possible. The other way.

B

We have another way to actually solve this problem is named, you know, immediate term right now we have some promotions and do believe you know working to create more right now the test every test. If you want to take one exam, it will cost you just 180 so and it will be right until tomorrow. But here is here's the good part, so you can pay now, but you can schedule your test in the future.

B

So right now you can actually pay for the certification at this price and said that you're going to take the tests in two months, so that will give you two months to actually prepare and take the test.

B

So let's take advantage of this if you want both certifications right now, is to 10, so it's preferable, yeah, but exams for that and as I already said, you can, you know, say I'm going to take this one in two months: I'm going to take this one in three months forever and you will be able to actually take it so yeah. What is the future of this certification? So we are going to keep working on the pricing issue. I mean this has been the main concern of the community. For me, I have to fill in.

B

You know, because I'm from South America I represent I represent a lot of communities there. That can actually afford this price, so we are going to work through. You know this issue provide accessible price for everybody,.

A

Also, moving forward we're going to be making sure that the certification stays evergreen, we're going to synchronize it with the node long-term support schedule. So currently the certification is against node, ten in April, no ten is going into maintenance and no 12 becomes the is already the LTS, but will become the remaining LTS, so in April will do another release for the node, twelve LTS and then October, roughly node fourteen will be released and we'll we'll have the exam updated for that.

A

So, as Mars were saying about the year six modules and so forth, if that lands in node fourteen the certification will be adapted for that, so that it stays relevant that it stays current will also be tracking industry, best practices and conventions and assessing, on a continual basis, the certification for those needs.

A

Also, in the future, more certifications, question mark so yeah. We any ideas of how you would want to see that again we're on Twitter come talk to us, talk to Robin we're really interested in here or you have to say. If.

B

You have more ideas. We are open to any comment these, as already said at the beginning of the talk it takes a community. So if you want to be part of this, please come with ideas. Please come to help us talk to us. So then yeah we are having. If you're interested in being certified, we are having a workshop. They have the information, but the.

A

Information right.

B

A

Place you're on today, room five for one a both Adrian and myself will be there. We have no source of set up an environment, that's essentially very similar to the exam environment, so you can have a play with it and and see how it feels.

B

Here is the URL again, you want more information here is take a picture visit later and join us word show that we are doing.

A

If you follow us on Twitter I've, just I tweeted out the slides for this before we started, so if you want to get the slides and see those codes or go over them, find me on Twitter yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.