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are you zend certified?
Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 4:57 am
by pleigh
just like to know if you guys are zend certified...what is the gain or advantage having a certification?obviously, im not...

just like to hear from you guys...

Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 5:31 am
by Chris Corbyn
I was gonna ask this the other day. I'm just curious which of the members on this board have gained the certificate (and was going to make my own mind up how hard it's likely to be)

The impression I get is that the amount of advanced theory you are expected to know isn't much... but then again I've never seen a paper.
Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 5:49 am
by pleigh
an opportunity for a larger payroll maybe one of my thought..

Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 6:01 am
by Maugrim_The_Reaper
Haven't considered it really. Many of the test questions seem very specific to function syntax with little in the way of advanced theory. I prefer using the manual as a reference for such things, can't be bothered to memorise the quirks of all those functions. I just remember the name and if needed pull up the PHP manual page, or let my IDE autocomplete the syntax for me.
I assume I would fail the exam

Does that make me a bad programmer?
Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 6:04 am
by Chris Corbyn
Maugrim_The_Reaper wrote:Haven't considered it really. Many of the test questions seem very specific to function syntax with little in the way of advanced theory. I prefer using the manual as a reference for such things, can't be bothered to memorise the quirks of all those functions. I just remember the name and if needed pull up the PHP manual page, or let my IDE autocomplete the syntax for me.
I assume I would fail the exam

Does that make me a bad programmer?
I'm with you 100%. The manual is for reference... there's no need to memorise it.
I actually have a cheat sheet on my office wall for certain functions... namely the array ones. No matter how many time I use in_array, array_push() etc I never remember if haystack is first or second

Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 6:30 am
by Maugrim_The_Reaper
Exactly my sentiment - quirks exist to be looked up in a suitable reference source, not to be memorised religiously. I think the Zend Cert. although probably quite valid if you are on the PHP employment trail, is ultimately not all that useful to a developer. It's more assurance for an employer that you do actually know something about PHP and aren't spinning tall tales of your prowess during an interview.
Even so I'd expect most employers to test your knowledge of the theoretical side of programming so hopefully no one believes the Zend Cert. is the pinacle of PHP knowledge... Me, I would set a few programming tasks centred around OOP, design patterns and probably at least one problem which requires some creative acrobatics to solve. I'd also set up a problem centred on gathering user requirement and translating these into a valid (and actually useful) design. Far more useful than relying on Zend's certification.
Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 7:25 am
by cj5
Zend certification = another $200 rip-off for a piece of paper saying you can code. Crap! I can tell you right now that I am PHP certified, and I have thousands of lines of code to prove it.
Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 9:51 am
by feyd
Yeah, as far as I've seen the test isn't exactly a good judge of ability but memorization of obscure and often useless bits of information about PHP, its functions or Zend itself.
Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 11:07 am
by Deemo
what exactly is the format of the test? multiple choice? short answer? long coding questions?
Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 12:36 pm
by Maugrim_The_Reaper
Multiple choice I believe - there's a short form sample over at
http://www.zend.com/store/education/cer ... hp?begin=1
I got 6/8 so maybe I'm not as bad as I thought

. The rest were stuff I have the manual for...
Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 4:51 pm
by someberry
You have completed the Self Test!
Your score is out of . Check out the answers and explanations of the questions.
It looks like you are ready to take the Zend PHP Certification exam.
Schedule your test now at one of over 3,500 test centers worldwide.
Doesn't even tell me how many I got right, I had to check with the answers to find my score!! I only got 4/8 right, and have been coding with PHP for around 3-4 years. I think this says my feelings exactly:
Morgan Craft wrote:The first and last one, why would I know what happens when you stick crap like that into count? I've used count several times, mainly for checking the number of elements in arrays, why would I place a string in it?
Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 5:22 pm
by Chris Corbyn
I got 6 out of 8. That taster confirmed my suspicions too... it's a memory test, not a test of competence. Better off rolling your own theory tests if you're running interviews IMO.
Morgan Craft wrote:The first and last one, why would I know what happens when you stick crap like that into count? I've used count several times, mainly for checking the number of elements in arrays, why would I place a string in it?
[
Damn right. Same goes for the same question with strlen() and count() nested. Maybe we should make a Devnetworks exam

Free, and community supported of course
And that "null" question!! I left it blank cos I wasn't sure if their stupid exam would treat my word "null" as a string, hence I did what the function did and said nothing.... hence that's one of the ones I got wrong :-\
Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 5:41 pm
by cj5
I'm in the job search process right now, and 4/10 jobs I've interviewed at gave me paper tests (no references on hand). It's tough, but on the same token, not a real situation. If I am coding a project or just a piece of code, I am more likely to adjust my theory on how something works based on perusing the manual or looking over discussion forums on the way some aspect of code works. I did awful on those interview tests. I hated tests in school, and I hate tests now. Down with tests! Although it does help in weeding out those who have flirted with coding PHP (i.e. folks who read a book, feel they are ready to develop real code, and would take months to learn how to code at the capacity of an entry level developer), and get to the people who actually can code right off the bat.
BTW: 3/4 employers have made me an offer
Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 7:47 pm
by neophyte
Who splits classes into multiple php blocks and why the hell would they test me on that? Most of the quiz is covered in depth in the study guide and practice test -- especially the crap about count(). Has anybody used that one or encountered it for anything but an array?
Posted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 4:33 am
by someberry
Has anybody used that one or encountered it for anything but an array?
Why would you? Anything other than an array would return 1, or 0 is the variable was null.
I see no reason why you would do this (and would have thought before consulting the PHP manual that it would have come out in a parse error):
It just wouldn't happen in a real life situation.
Also, what was with the...
Again, who would really do that in a real life situation?