The Pursuit of Another Certification

I have decided to put myself through more punishment and do another Java certification. This time I have to complete an assignment, not study for an exam.

The assignment requires you to develop a solution, using the Java programming language, from a set of requirements. I think the practical nature of the assignment would suit me fine, even though the assignment requires you to make many assumptions. In contrast the exam is very black and white, but it requires you to learn theory and there are some trick questions, which forces you to know the theory really well. Again, I found the exam style questions comfortable.

I decided to do another certification for various reasons.

• Since I'm not doing development work per se in my job, it will keep my developer skills sharp. This could be viewed as a learning experience, because I still consider myself a newbie when it comes to programming. Often at work there are some developers who know their shit really well, but I find myself lacking or totally ignorant in the same area.
• When I leave my company and work somewhere else, or go overseas in a year or two, the certification would look good on the CV and, coupled with the experience I get from doing the assignment, it may be easier to find work.
• It would further my career greatly. At my last performance review, I shot myself in the foot saying that I would complete the assignment by the next performance review. I guess I should get started.
• I find that at the moment, I'm not using my time as judiciously as I would like. So the assignment will keep me busy during my downtime.

I've already got the ball rolling. I went to Dymocks to see if they had any books that specialised in this certification. They didn't have any in stock, so I got them to order one for me.

The next thing to do is to purchase a voucher from Sun. Traditionally my company has paid for employees to get certified. One of the development team leaders arranged for all developers to get certified, so I approached him to see if he could get the company to pay for my voucher. Unforunately he told me that since I don't work in any development team he couldn't help me. What a lame reply! Instead, I have to approach my manager to approve this purchase. I'd rather not pay $500 dollars myself.

When I did my last two Java certifications, I remember procrastinating for as long as one year before I finally got my act together. I hope it doesn't happen again this time round!