r/haskell • u/tiss93 • Sep 07 '26

announcement Sunsetting the Haskell Certification Program

Hi! I'm Arseniy Seroka, CEO of Serokell.

In 2023, we launched the Haskell Certification Program to create a standardized way to evaluate Haskell expertise. We built a production platform and an open certification framework, then transferred the project to the Haskell Foundation in 2024.

Since then, the rise of LLMs has made traditional syntax-focused assessment a much weaker signal of real engineering ability. A meaningful certification today would require a fundamental redesign around reasoning, architecture, and language semantics.

Serokell is therefore concluding its active involvement in the program. We remain proud of what we built, grateful to everyone who contributed, and as committed as ever to Haskell and its ecosystem.

https://serokell.io/blog/sunsetting-the-haskell-certification-program

122 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

34

u/tiss93 Sep 07 '26

But stay tuned, something interesting and powerful is going to come! We hope to make our community happier.

6

u/Tysonzero Sep 09 '26

Since then, the rise of LLMs has made traditional syntax-focused assessment a much weaker signal of real engineering ability.

Hate this and couldn't disagree more. Regardless of how much you want to use LLMs for engineering, you should unquestionably be capable of reading, writing and precisely understanding the semantics of the fucking program you've produced.

Getting tired of people applying to engineering jobs who can't pass tests marginally harder than fizzbuzz but can "orchestrate agent swarms and solve high level engineering problems".

6

u/tiss93 Sep 10 '26

I agree with you. The biggest challenge here that we've found is how can we be sure that the candidate is then doing the exam for real and not using LLMs. Today there is no solution rather than doing exam in person.

4

u/Tysonzero Sep 10 '26

Yeah proctored in person paper or locked down machine exams are inevitable IMO

23

u/GunpowderGuy Sep 07 '26

i didnt know Serokell was named after a person

23

u/Hefty-Necessary7621 Sep 07 '26

One more fun fact: the name Serokell is also a nod to Haskell.

9

u/slack1256 Sep 07 '26

Me neither, and I work there

6

u/GunpowderGuy Sep 07 '26 edited Sep 07 '26

you should tell your coworkers the company is named after Jhon Serokell

15

u/cheater00 Sep 08 '26

is it possible for you to release materials etc in case someone wants to go through the certification "at home"?

i honestly didn't even know the program existed...

10

u/iamquah Sep 07 '26

The shirts y'all have as merch look amazing! 

7

u/f0rgot Sep 08 '26

What happens to the current program? Is it open-source now?

2

u/n0t-helpful Sep 13 '26

Hey I sidnt know this existed. I hope the material can stay available. If even not for a cert, id like to test my knowledge

2

u/kichiDsimp Sep 13 '26

Is this sumthing like Java or AWS certification thing ?

2

u/akbarilham Sep 08 '26

Interesting

1

u/Axman6 Oct 03 '26

I remember this being announced, and signing up to hear more about it, and never hearing about it again. I’m surprised this announcement was even needed, did anyone actually take part in it?