I recently passed the Sun Certified Web Component Developer Exam and for those of you that plan on taking this exam I will pass on a few hints for you. There is always the debate about whether certifications are even worth the time and do employers value them. Being someone that actually hires people I can tell you that to me they mean something. Certifications don’t have anywhere close to the weight of good solid experience, but the fact that someone has a Programmer certification shows they at least have the capability to memorize content. There are a lot of people in this world that can’t do that and most of them you don’t want!
Did this certification make me a better developer? Of course it did. I thought I knew everything there was about Java Web Development. I even teach a college course on it. I think this exam helped round out some of my rough edges. It will definitely help me be a better instructor.
Now for the exam. It is freaking hard! There aren’t too many people that are going to just walk in and pass this exam without a significant amount of studying. You only need one thing to study for this exam and that is the Head First Servlets and JSP book by Kathy Sierra and team. The book is dead-on accurate with respect to everything you need to know to pass the test. It pretty much comes down to memorize everything (especially web.xml) and spend a week studying the tag lib chapters (read them 3 times if you have to).
