Decebal on programming

First impressions after passing zcpe

• • ☕️ 3 min read

I wanted to share some of my first experiences and impressions little time after getting certified.

I managed to review a lot of my past work experiences and reflect on things that I could have done better. I realized that a programmer would always think that his coding skill is better even in front of his own code after a period of time, I like to say that the time taken between realizing that your code could be rewritten to be more efficient and the time the code was written defines how quickly you can improve, therefore it defines ones potential. I do consider this must be the main asset for a programmer.

Back to the certification exam, I want to name some key words that I consider valuable for preparing the exam, also for programming php at a higher level of understanding :

  • ActiveRecord
  • Closure
  • Late static binding
  • Pear Authentication package
  • Generators
  • Objects as arrays
  • Namespaces
  • Operations with dates
  • Sorting arrays
  • Errors and exceptions
  • Magic

Although i find it difficult to name the exact differences between php versions at times as this is by far a little thing to know about programming, I do think that one should be prepared when speaking of php with this knowledge , otherwise his opinion would be undermined.

I plan on doing some articles about each of the key words above.

Finally i would like to resume my impressions with a little pro vs cons section:

  • Pro

    1. Although you are an experienced programmer or not, you should know a little about what and why your website written in php needs, what solutions are there and how they can be used, such as those deprecated libraries from pear, but whom carry big ideas that now have more abstract and evolved implementations (this argument i take it is a little on the cons side too).
    2. Date vs idate, a difference i wouldn’t have learned but the zcpe challenge
    3. I learned new questions like, why work with array object instead of array?
    4. The exam demands more involvement than before, you need code review skills as well code writing skills, above theory tested through recognition or completion.

  • Cons

    1. The certification and exam preparation seems a bit profit oriented instead of looking on how to showcase your php skill
    2. I expected to escape some interview questions by showing off my certification, that did not happen for me, recruiters trust their opinion above the certification, which makes me sad
    3. Maybe xml was or is in trend but I rarely worked with, all of my colleagues too, so that I see little need for so many questions on xml libraries
    4. I would have enjoyed some testing on design patterns, if I remember well there were some shy questions on mvc, too little as almost all projects on web demands such knowledge or of more advanced knowledge.

It may be more to say than just those, I tried to rule out some obvious points and let you tell me more from your point of view.