In a continuation of his series talking about the Zend Certification, Robert Peake has posted this new item on his blog today - the Pros and Cons of the ZCE.

The pros are significant and valuable, and the cons could certainly be addressed, for example, with a second, more advanced certification or even by revamping the ZCE. All in all, the very existence of the ZCE is a huge shot in the arm for PHP in the enterprise, where certificates and badges play critical roles in legitimizing not only the developer but her development language of choice.

He gives three points on both sides - including (for the pro side) "bolsters enterprise adoption of PHP with a clear standard for quality developers", and (on the con side) "need to know some functions by heart does not represent a real-world environment".

Having taken the ZCE myself (and passing - woo!), I definitely agree with some of these points. While it does test your PHP knowledge, it doesn't do much to test your development/problemsolving skills with it. Sure, there are a few questions on it that make you think, but any test that has questions where the answer is a matter of syntax might need to be reworked just a bit...