It’s a old post that I bring from medium, and I want to keep here exactly as I wrote. maybe to keep it as a memory <3

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How I Prepared for Zend PHP 7.1 Certification

Hi everyone, I’m Erison Silva and I’ll tell a little about my experience with the Zend PHP 7.1 Certification test!

Well, as this is my first article, nothing better than to begin by talking about my dream since I started to work with PHP. :)

Zend certification was something far from reality for me. When I accessed the Zend page and looked at all those topics, I thought to myself:

“There are so many things to study!”

But time was passing and I started to meet people who had certifications in other areas, such as system administration, database administration, among others. So I thought:

“If they got it, why couldn’t I get it too?”

Then one day I decided to buy the voucher and choose a date to take the test:

September 25, 2017!

So I took 15 days before the test to study and, for me:

“I was preparing for war” :P

I divided my study into topics and started studying from 08:00 am to 05:00 pm, more or less every day. A technique that helped me a lot was the Pomodoro Technique.

Very cool, but hey Erison, what content did you use?

Hehehe, ok, I’m going to talk about it now. :P

I began studying with a book about the Zend Certification 5.5. Even though the book talks about a previous version, I could see many examples and questions, and the explanations were pretty good. Although it had some mistakes, overall it is a very good book. :)

But that was just the beginning of my preparation. After that, I studied all the new features from PHP 5.5 to 5.6, and then PHP 7.0 and 7.1. I learned a lot, both about new things I didn’t know and about understanding the language better.

After that, I participated in a community that helped me a lot: Rumo à Certificação PHP

There are questions every day, and I recommend everyone to check it out. :)

I think I answered about 400 questions. Hehehe, like I said above: “I was preparing for war” :P

It took me two days to review everything, and one day before the test I relaxed. I did things I like, for example:

• Going to the beach
• Going out with friends
• Watching a movie

In other words, I did things to relax my mind.

Finally, the big day arrived. It was a Monday and the test was scheduled for 9:00 am, but I got there at 7:00 am. Hehehe.

As I had my notes with me, I sat down and started reviewing everything.

About the Test

I don’t think the Zend test is anything out of this world. They just want to know whether you have a good understanding of the language.

For example:

Question

What is the output of the code below?

echo '1' . (print '2') + 3;

Answer:

214

Why?

I’ll try to explain with this image:

So you need to study because there are only a few cases that we encounter in our day-to-day work.

When I started the test, I was a bit nervous, but then I gained confidence and became more relaxed. At the end, I received the long-awaited message:

“Congratulations”

Well, that’s it! I hope my experience helps you in your journey to study for the Zend PHP 7.1 Certification.