How valuable are these from an employers point of view? I will only have to pay £250 and the rest is paid by student loan company.
The problem I see is that, employers don’t really specify they want a highly experienced java programmer, they don’t really ask for much of an education either, they simply state 10-15 different technologies (java, c, c++, mysql, php etc) and say “you must have experience in the above”.
It is not very “junior” friendly, will these certificates help me at all or should I just fuck it and go on a mass learning spree and build a portfolio and advertise as freelance with stupidly low rates?
I did the java certification exam (twice!) just because i had no formal qualification and wanted to show on my resume that i was a serious programmer.
Unfortunately i failed the first time because it was harder than i thought!
I agree that if your name is on a big project then it’s not necessary.
I learnt loads of stuff, but forgot most of it immediately after passing the exam. The certifications remind me of driving theory tests - masses of fiddly details, but no substitute for practical experience. I studied english literature at uni, so I’m happy to take anything that gives my a little credibility in programming.
I can appreciate that. I have a degree in music. At least, I did manage to take a few programming courses “for depth” (logic & design, assembly programming, Pascal–wanted to hit it at each tier). In terms of learning things, I had only a loose understanding of the rules for overriding & subclassing and such and how they affected class and variable scopes. It was enough to get my programs to work. The test study forced me to clarify this, get a more precise understanding of these relationships, and has contributed to better program design and a slightly smaller window for “floundering about” errors.
I’m thinking about trying my hand at some Java tutoring to fill in some “down” hours and am pondering once again whether or not to go ahead and take it, in order to add to the resume. Maybe showing off some programs will be enough, and mentioning how “awesome” I’m rated at JGO.
It depends mostly on where and what kind of company you want to work for.
In my opinion it is nice to have a certification to get your first few jobs, it will make you stand out from the mass of students getting out of university with no experience. About building a “portfolio”, it only matters if you intend to be a freelancer. I personally never had my portfolio analyzed in a regular job interview.
Also, some big companies want to comply to their own quality certifications, and for that they need a percentage of certified employees in certain areas. So if they are pursuing some of those and have 2 similar candidates but one has a certification, they’ll go for the certified one for obvious reasons.
I myself have a few certifications which I pursued solely for getting raises in my previous job.
I did learn things with them. Things that I never used and some other things that I turned out to really use and better understand after properly studying them.
I’d go for one, specially if you’ll be looking for a first job soon. It’s good to have something more “official” then ‘my super cool particle systems’ in your curriculum.
And you will also eventually learn something you didn’t know about the Java language.
