Thank you, Atif and Angela, for your congratulations.
Angela, I can completely understand your point-of-view. I agree that the value of this certification should not be diluted, and that its intention is to point out people who have the technical competence to do a good job in J2EE in real life situations.
It seems that whereever I go, I just bring the property values down.
But in my defense, I should point out that it is Sun who sets the bar, not I, and I passed fair and square, utilizing study materials recommended by Sun.
Also, note that I am not yet a
SCEA. I merely passed Part I, which is not the real meat of the certification process. If I may speculate on Sun's rationale for this format, which begins with the computer administered multiple choice exam, and ends with a project and a series of essays on the project, they are probably thinking:
Part I: Automatically weed out those with poor understanding of J2EE and software modeling, so that we won't have to hand grade poor Part II assignments.
Part II: Test the applicant's ability to handle a realistic business situation.
Part III: Help judge the authenticity and context of the Part II submission.
So the real judgment is still to come. Just pray to the fairness gods that I will get what I deserve and fail Part II.
From where you are looking, I may have taken the certification exam for a cynical reason - but that reason was not to fish for a higher salary - most salary reports I've seen state that what I make is very high for a regular development lead, so I'm not complaining. The main reason I am doing this is to focus my attention in areas recommended by Sun and seek technical knowledge, guidance, and feedback, as I try to grope my way around an unfamilar territory.
As for whether I would be confident if a company were to approach me for a J2EE solution, despite a seemingly cavalier attitude, when it comes to developing software solutions for my customers, I'm quite serious. I've just recently approached a company that is unfamiliar with
Java, gave them a proposal, and convinced them that I can lead them through a pilot program to migrate them to J2EE technology. I wasn't going to bring that up, because I think that my business affairs are somewhat outside the scope of this discussion group, but you asked.
I sometimes tend to move forward with reckless abandon, but that's just the way I get sometimes, because life is so short.
I hope that that clarifies things, and that I am not out to sabotage everyones' hard efforts, but am just out there like everyone else in a journey of exploration and self-improvement. I notice that I've rambled on so, so I'd just like to thank you and everyone for your constructive comments, and if I can do this, then I think anyone can, me being the idiot I am.
