One of the less satisfying sessions/panels at OSCON this year was the ‘Perl Certification’ Panel, in which a panel of various luminaries, moderated by Tim Maher of the Seattle Perl Users’ Group spoke inconclusively about whether there was a need for Perl Certification. It seems to me that, if you’re going to have a panel on this kind of topic, you must make sure that your moderator is impartial (but not disinterested). Tim Maher, for all his many virtues, was not impartial.

I arrived late to the panel, so I could be forming a bad impression, but it seemed to me the panel had the cart before the horse, and any similar panel will also have such an ungainly configuration, and here’s why: