Zend Certified PHP Engineer

Zend, the company behind PHP, offers a certification program for some time now. You can take an exam and if you pass, you can call yourself a Zend Certified PHP Engineer. I took the exam in July 2006. Back then, it was still a PHP 4.3 exam. These day the exam is worthless: PHP4 has been deprecated and has been superseded by PHP5. However, back in 2006 we were still using it at iWink.

The exam is not very difficult, there are already many web sites explaining the contents of the exam. Taking the exam is a bit cumbersome: there are companies specializing in handling such exams and you have to find one before you can take the exam. Unfortunately, there is no such company in Groningen, so I took the exam in Leeuwarden. After taking the exam, you’ll immediately hear if you passed. I passed on the first try.

After about eight weeks I received a nice package from the United States: my Zend Certified Engineer certificate. It comes framed, very convenient. It has some nice patterns and a huge golden seal, it looks very pretty. Makes for a great decoration.

If the exam worth the effort? You’ll learn the fine details of PHP4: casting and evaluating variables, expressions. If you have a few years of experience you won’t need it. However, it’s not expensive so you can certainly give it a try.

Next: MySQL Certified Developer.