Zend Certified Engineer

dougal85

I have seen a couple of threads about this on PHPB. However, they have all diverted from there original point. So I thought I'd try again 😛

Has anybody here became a Zend Certified Engineer in PHP5?

I was wondering if it was something worth doing in the future, I realise I'm not at a standard to do it now.

It seems like it might be quite a good standard to reach, so even learning from books what is in the exam and not even necessarily sit it unless you need to prove to somebody.

Share your experiences if you have sat the exam, or if you thought about it.

piersk

I haven't taken it yet, but I'm definately planning on taking it over the next couple of months. It's actually not that expensive ($125 or about £65 depending on the exchange rate) so it's definately not going to break the bank!

dougal85

Yeah, I noticed it would only work out about £65.

I did call the testing centre I found in Edinburgh and since its another company, the charge £75 for sitting the exam. so i guess its £140 in total.

bubblenut

I actually took the exam on Friday and appeared on the Zend yellow pages today. I did it mainly because the company I work for offered it to me but I think I may have done it off my own back anyway. I haven't done any other kind of certification so I don't really have any perspective but I thought it was very well done. It covers some advanced topics very well.

In terms of learing for it, I used the study guide published by php|architect and did their mock exams online. However, I would be warey of the php|architect mock exam, it claims to be considerably harder than the real exam but in actual fact, I found the real exam to be the harder one.

dougal85

Thats interesting. I seen on a blog somewhere while looking atround online. They agree'd the php|arch where harder.

However, I guess it all depends what topics come up and what you feel most comfortable with. How long have you been using PHP? Did it take allot of studying for?

Congrats with passing btw.

bubblenut

I've been working full time with PHP for about 5 years now. I'm yet to start using PHP5 in the workplace though. That, coupled with the fact that I am quite keen on object oriented analysis and design which I found PHP|Arch focused on a little more, may have contributed to why I found the real exam harder.

I didn't actually spend much time studying for it. I read through the study guide, which was quite interesting as I hadn't read any books specific to language features in quite a while. Then, after I had done the mock exam, I focused on the areas which I was show to struggle with. The mock exam breaks down your results into broad areas which gives you a good idea on where you need to focus.