ZEND PHP 5 Certification Study Guide
Thursday, 1 March 2007 @ 10:02I recently picked up a copy of the “ZEND PHP 5 Certification Study Guide” by php|architect. I have not yet finished it, however thus far I have liked it enough to want to tell other people about it.
The book is around 250 pages long (short by most standards). To this point I have found that this book is a good way to brush up on things I already knew and learn some things that I did not. I am personally using the book to help me study for the PHP 5 certification. However, certification or not, it is turning out to be an excellent tool for honing my skills. It has the added benefit of showing me areas that I need to work on as well as indicating to myself how much about PHP I really know.
I would recommend this book to the PHP programmer of any level.
I have read this book, and taken a couple of the Zend PHP5 *prectice* exams, getting ready for the official PHP5 certification. When reading the book, I was happy with it. I, like Jon, found it worthy of reading. It did highlight an area or two that I, being a self taught software developer, knew that I needed work.
The pitfall to this book is that, even though it touts its self as *the* prep guide for the Zend certification, it seriously lacks a lot of the info needed to actually pass the test. If you are using it as *the* study guide, I would emphasize getting another book or two to complete your studying.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have not yet taken the actual Zend PHP5 certification test, but I have taken 2 of the official *practice* tests and, even though I passed them both, I know that I wouldn’t have if I had only relied on this one book. I believe that my 10+ years of programming, in conjunction with this, and other books, were the reason I passed.
What the book is good for is letting you see inside the mind of the test, to some degree. Giving you a feel for the various topics that the questions will revolve around.