Passed the ZCE Exam!

After many months of slacking, I finally scheduled a date to take the Zend Certified Engineer exam. After preparing with the Zend PHP 5 Certification Guide book (which I definitely recommend if you're going to take the exam), I thought the test was going to be incredibly simple, as the material was pretty basic.

Boy, was I wrong! It's not that the test was complicated, but you did have to know small details of functions that are rarely used (at least by me). For example, any PHP programmer with some experience knows that magic quotes shouldn't be used, one reason being it creates a false sense of security (in fact, this directive will be removed in PHP 6!). Yet, some of the questions on the exam touched on how to detect if magic_quotes_gpc was set, and functions related to magic_quotes.

Of course, having never used the dreaded thing, I only correctly selected detecting it through ini_get, but did not know what functions were related to the setting (I now know that the functions are get_magic_quotes_gpc and get_magic_quotes_runtime).

Anyways, the rest of the exam wasn't that bad and I managed to pass it (I wish Zend would tell you the score though, just out of curiosity).

In conclusion, I definitely recommend anyone working with PHP to get certified. You'll learn a few things while preparing and you'll get access to.....(drumroll please).......YOUR OWN ZCE PAGE AND LOGO. Here's mine!