Wed, 15 Aug 2018
# PHP 7: Zend Certified Engineer Exam (ZCE)
Table of Contents
# Shortly
- 12 month ago I've started thinking it'd be awesome to actually take the exam.
- 6 month ago I downloaded the study guide and begun taking notes.
- Yesterday I have passed the Zend Certified Engineer exam.
- It took roughly a year for me to feel confident enough to actually take the exam.
# What I've learned
I must say that I've been doing stuff with PHP for long years and I felt that I am good at it. But still, many PHP details and features were not discovered.
The biggest challenge was to remember all the small details of how PHP works. Usually, I just google details or even better - use proven opensource abstractions and not really get into deep details or manual implementation of things.
When I took the exam preparation seriously I faced the vast amount of things to study, play with and remember. My notes quickly become a book. Some folks shared that they've spent a few weeks before passing the exam. Naturally, that was not my case, I rescheduled my exam twice just because I felt not confident enough.
I promise you will learn new interesting stuff while learning PHP inside out. There are tons of features to use and build on top of.
# My way of preparation
I tried different styles of preparation. This one worked for me:
- download the study guide and follow the exam structure
- use multiple sources of information - the first one is PHP.net, but I also recommend Davey Shafik book, and Joshua Thijssen's book
- 1-3 hours per day to focus on studying
- small book-like notes of each significant function or feature
- each function or feature must be played within a terminal/text editor to train the brain
- when all subjects are finished then use only notes to refresh the memory
- use Lorna Jane's sample exam to test yourself (when I did it I immediately understood that I had to go back to studying).
One day I felt that it was enough studying and I must go and give it a try. A good night sleep and some caffeine (some people use Cola, but I prefer actual coffee) served me well.
# Sunset Of Zend Certification
This year Zend seems to shut this program down. I keep my PDF and printed certificates, but unfortunately I lost my online page.