Earned My PHP Certification

Today, I successfully passed my PHP5 Certification exam. This was easily the hardest certification exam that I've ever taken - the test genuinely requires a deep understanding of the language and I certainly have respect for any fellow developers that have also passed.

I will say that I do have an issue with the questions that do nothing more than test your ability to recall function names and parameters. The PHP Manual contains something around 6,000 functions; reference material exists for a reason. This is compounded by the fact that a fair number of core functions have aliases (a poor practice, in my opinion). Similarly, a few questions required that I actually type the function name, rather than choose it from a list. A single typo could mean failing the question (and possibly the entire exam) when, in real life, any typo my IDE doesn't pick up, the PHP interpreter will. I consider it far better to provide contextual questions that test my ability to understand how and why a function might be used. For the most part the exam was mostly cognitive- and syntax-oriented, but I'd certainly advocate for a review of some questions.

That being said, it was quite satisfying when the "CONTRATULATIONS!" text appeared on my screen. Especially for someone with no formal computer science training, passing the exam gave me an powerful sense of accomplishment and validation in my skills.