I've joined the growing number of people with this certification.
Candidates are allowed 85 minutes to answer 50 questions when they take the exam. I was given the orientation, answered a short quiz, took the test, reviewed my answers, was given a printed exam report and was out the door in under 15 minutes. Guess it helps to know your stuff!
I realized how important certification was when I needed help with PayPal integration for my new book, entitled "Flex Data Services, Eclipse and Hibernate." I needed to personalize the PDF copies of the book for each customer when they purchase online. The information is available from the PayPal transaction, but PayPal's documentation is truly horrible. I realized that the quickest way for me to get the job done would be to work with a PayPal Certified Developer. I found a suitable consultant and put her to work on my project in under an hour. The next day we had a working prototype.
As a customer, I expected that a certified person would be able to converse with me about options and provide an overview of how to approach the project, and this is exactly what I found. By relying on the certified PayPal consultant's expertise, I went from problem statement to having viable solution options in one afternoon. For me, that was the value of certification as a customer.
I decided to take the lesson to heart and become Adobe certified myself. As a full-service contractor, I hope that my prospective customers see certification in the same way.
... oh, yes, buy the book!
Aug 10, 2009 Update
Last week I saw a number of people new to Flex jointly decide on a newsgroup that they were going to watch the "Learn Flex in a Week" videos and then take the test. I apologize if this blog posting gave the impression that the certification test was trivial. It is not. A newcomer to Flex should not expect that simply by watching some videos and attempting to work through the examples that they would have have developed the knowledge and experience necessary to obtain this certification.
From Adobe's web site: "The Adobe Flex 3 with AIR Exam is based upon the most critical job activities that a Flex developer performs. The skills and knowledge certified by this examination represent a professional level of expertise for a certified individual."
I have worked with Flex and AIR since they were alpha software, and continue to use the technology today. Most of my project involve Flex data services and Java EE. The consensus is that an experienced programmer should work with Flex intensively for at least a year before attempting to get certified. I agree that this would be suitable preparation.
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Mike Slinn
Independent full-service software contractor and author
http://slinnbooks.com
http://mslinn.com
