The Pros and Cons of Zend Certification

Introduction

As a PHP developer, you may have been asking yourself how to improve your skills, gain reputation or become more professional in your work. One of the ways of doing so is to get through a certification programme. The only one that covers PHP itself (not a particular framework or software solution) is being delivered by the Zend company. In the remainder of the article I will focus on this particular certificate and describe its advantages and disadvantages. At the end I will also mention some other certification programs that may be valuable to a PHP developer.

Please note that I’m not affiliated in any way with the companies that offer the certification programs described in the article.

Zend certification – general info

The Zend company offers the Zend Certified PHP Engineer certification programme which covers different areas of developing applications in PHP 5.5. The topics that you have to learn for the exam are grouped in several categories like PHP Basics, Object Oriented Programming, Security or Arrays. The company offers a course that prepares for the exam but it’s not mandatory. The exam itself may be taken in one of Pearson VUE Testing Centers which are available all over the world, so it probably won’t be difficult to find a testing center near your location. The cost of the exam is $195.

Possible benefits

1. A way of confirming your skills

Of course the basic goal of getting certified is to get a formal confirmation of your programming skills. After passing the exam you can describe yourself as a Zend Certified Engineer (e.g. in your CV) and you will be listed in the directory containing all of those who passed.

In my opinion, getting certified may be especially important if you’re an intermediate PHP developer and you want to distinguish yourself from beginners. As the exam itself isn’t simple, I think it will probably be too difficult for those who are just starting out. The exam covers different areas of PHP in a detailed way which probably won’t be necessary and will be too complex for newbies. On the other hand, it’s worth keeping in mind that advanced PHP programmers can prove their skills just by referring to their professional experience. The applications they have worked on in the past, the code they have written or their commitment to open source projects may be a more valuable proof of their skills than the certificate.

2. A way to review and extend your knowledge

If you plan to take the exam, you will certainly have to prepare for it. As it covers all of the PHP basic functionalities, the preparation for the exam may be a good way of learning different aspects of PHP or reviewing your knowledge.

When you started writing PHP applications, you probably went through some basic tutorials or a book or two. Then, as you were becoming more advanced, you read more on the topics that you needed to learn about. You searched the web looking for solutions to specific problems, you read different books and articles concerning the subjects you were working on. But have you done a course that covers all of the PHP concepts in a thorough way, from beginning to end? Probably not. That’s why the preparation for the PHP certification exam may be valuable. It may be an opportunity to review the knowledge in the areas that you are already familiar with and learn something new about the other topics you may have skipped.

The Zend certificate covers a lot of ground, from basic concepts like the syntax, operators or language constructs, to all of the different features of the PHP like working with files, string and array manipulation, handling sessions, cookies and form data etc. During the exam you may be also asked about databases and SQL, basics of HTTP requests or different data types (JSON, XML etc.). So if you want to get the certificate you will have to get familiar with all aspects of the language, not only the ones that are, for example, needed in your work right now. As a result, you may gain a wider perspective on PHP itself and find some tools or solutions that you didn’t know of before. You may also discover some areas that you are weak in and get motivated to work on them.

The drawbacks

1. The construction of some of the exam questions

The exam consists of about 70 questions. You can find sample questions on the Zend website to see how they are built. Some of them just ask you What will the following code produce? and contain a code sample that you

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