Zend Certified Engineer!

As I have been using PHP to develop websites and web applications for the past two years, I thought it was about time to take the Zend PHP 5 Developer exam. 

The exam has a reputation for being ...er... challenging.  And, to be honest, I was a little apprehensive.

I had planned to set aside a month to study for the exam, but life being as it is, I ended up with about a week.  

During the week, I read three PHP books and kept referring to the online manual for clarification.  I wrote a little script to test my knowledge using questions similar to the exam.  I spent a couple of days working with XML, SOAP and REST - technologies that I really should work with more often.  Finally, I tried to memerize about 200 or so functions I thought I should know better.

On the day of the exam I didn't feel ready, but I didn't want to lose the money either, so I forced myself to go.  When I saw the questions, my heart sank.  They were ...er... challenging.  There are 90 questions.  The first 40 questions I was sure I got wrong!  I carried on to the end.  I still had 30 minutes left, so I went back to the beginning and checked over answers.  Actually, I changed about a third of them - taking the time to really think about what was going on in the code snippets.

Still convinced that I had failed miserably, I submitted the exam.  But guess what, I passed!  Yippee!!!

Adrian

Created: April 2, 2009, 1:44 am

Last updated: April 2, 2009, 1:50 am