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ZCE - has anyone sat this qualification?

Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2008 1:50 pm
by greyhoundcode
Has anyone recently sat and passed the ZCE certification, and if so how do you prepare and how high (or low) would you say the bar is set?

Re: ZCE - has anyone sat this qualification?

Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2008 11:33 am
by RobertGonzalez
I am going to be taking mine in two weeks (as long as the ZendCon folks managed to get my request right).

Re: ZCE - has anyone sat this qualification?

Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2008 1:17 pm
by greyhoundcode
I'm interested in taking it myself: have you undergone formal training for it or just self study?

Re: ZCE - has anyone sat this qualification?

Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2008 2:37 pm
by RobertGonzalez
My company sprang for a few PHP|Architect classes that included the ZCE course. I got 10 free practice exams with it. I have heard that the practice tests are nothing like the real one though. We'll find out in a couple of weeks.

I do have the PHP|Arch ZCE study book though. That is a great little tool even if you just want to learn the finer points of the language.

Re: ZCE - has anyone sat this qualification?

Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2008 2:39 pm
by onion2k
I looked at taking it a couple of years back but the practise questions just seemed to be a bunch of silly trivia things like "What does count() return when used on a string?". Knowing stuff like that doesn't tell anyone you're a decent developer so I didn't pursue it.

Re: ZCE - has anyone sat this qualification?

Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2008 2:52 pm
by RobertGonzalez
From what I have seen the ZCE PHP5 is totally not that way. There is a lot of stuff on there about OOP, Patterns, reference, statics, arrays, regexp and the like.

Re: ZCE - has anyone sat this qualification?

Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2008 5:24 am
by jayshields
onion2k wrote:"What does count() return when used on a string?"
I don't understand why they use programming questions like that. Especially when they go into things like "What does explode(" g g g g", "g g g") return?" because no one needs to memorise things like argument orders, it's about 3 seconds away in the manual.

They'd be better off giving you problems to solve and not marking too harsh on PHP specific things that people don't need to memorise.

Re: ZCE - has anyone sat this qualification?

Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2008 11:43 am
by RobertGonzalez
Have any of you taken the practice tests? I will record the next one I take so you can see it. The questions are totally not that way. You almost have to think like the PHP parser on some of them. On others, it makes you wonder why they put that in there. Of course, these are just the practice tests so I am not sure how closely they resemble the real deal.

Re: ZCE - has anyone sat this qualification?

Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2008 12:21 pm
by jayshields
I haven't ever seen a test on PHP of any kind, but have taken some Java/Visual Basic tests with stupid questions like I described.

Re: ZCE - has anyone sat this qualification?

Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2008 3:56 pm
by dml
I'm studying for the ZCE at the moment. I don't think the questions have very much real-world significance either, I treat them as training exercises that isolate basic skills and force you to perfect them. It's like if you're learning a sport, there's no more natural and fun way than to play full games, but it's also enormously helpful to do drills that work on one skill in isolation.

I don't find the learning very interesting, but the effort pays for itself fairly quickly - I'm a faster coder and make fewer mistakes because I've got a much more precise model in my brain of the parser and runtime environment, and I save a lot of time not reinventing the wheel because I've spent a few evenings going through every string and array function from a to z.

As for the argument order of explode(), I'm trying to remember it in case it comes up, but I don't think it's worth knowing and I hope they don't ask questions like that - I have a lot of respect for trivia, and what good trivia questions and good certification questions have in common is that they only seem to be trivial, but they can actually be answered by applying basic principles, thinking through the possibilities, and following a process of elimination.

Re: ZCE - has anyone sat this qualification?

Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2008 1:18 pm
by greyhoundcode
Cheers for the feedback, it's interesting to hear what others think. The ZCE itself certainly sounds like it might be worth a shot, after all nearly every qualification has its share of pointless questions and so on, but they all do demonstrate a certain level of ability.