views:

88

answers:

2

Except SCJP / SCWCD / SCEA for the Java are there any other related certifications a developer "should look" for.

Is it something similar for python ? C ? C++ ? SQL ?

PS: I know that some programmers affirm that certifications are useless and experience is what's important, but I strongly disagree. Learning for SCJP was great. I found out a lot of things that rarely show up in practice, but are important to know.

+1  A: 

I found the Sun Certified Java Developer (SCJD) was also a positive learning experience. That's the one where you actual write an assignment and submit it.

I've taken MCTS Exam 70-536: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Application Development Foundation, as well as 70-502 Windows Communication Foundation, and 70-503 Windows Presentation Foundation. But I would strongly discourage taking them or any Microsoft certifications.

All the official Microsoft Training Kits books that I have read are extremely poorly written and serve as bad preparation matter or reference books. Contrasting this with Kathy Sierra’s books for some of the Java Courses.

vicjugador
+2  A: 

There are all kinds of certifications available. If you're interested in pursuing additional certs (or as Mark Peters points out - even just study up for one to improve your skills), it makes sense to think about what it is you want out of it.

If your goal is purely to learn something new or to get a different perspective, than it might make sense for someone based in Java to study up on .Net or vice-versa. In the grand scheme of things, it might be more beneficial to learn something really different - like a functional programming language (Scheme anyone?). If, however, a cert really helps to motivate your learning, I don't know how much there is available.

If your goal is a little more pragmatic, then it might be best to focus on the layers of your current stack. I think it's always beneficial to have a better working knowledge of your flavor of DB. So, if you work mostly LAMP, then checkout the Oracle/Sun site. They've got MySQL cert aimed at developers - "Sun Certified MySQL Developer (SCMDEV)". If you work in Java/J2EE then DB2 or Oracle might make sense.

IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, et al. all have a fairly good roster of certs that you may be interested in, that can help to move you into different areas of specialization. They of course are mostly intended to validate knowledge of their products, but if you use any of them - why not look into it?

Happy studying.

S.Jones