In the very recent period this new thing popped up in the Drupal community that has everybody talking: the Acquia certification for Drupal developers. I'm writing this article minutes after actually taking this exam to share with you my impressions.

Why did I take the certification?

One of the things that prompted me to it was Angie "webchick" Byron's article about her experience taking the exam. It sounded interesting but also relevant to me as a Drupal developer. It announced an exam that could determine my value in this field.

A second aspect I'd like to mention is the fact that I work with Drupal but do not have an IT background. I am, what you call, a self-taught. Therefore the idea of having a certificate to prove my worth sounded good to me. So I took the opportunity and the exam that came with it.

Impressions

There are 2 ways you can take the exam: on site (physically) or online. To deliver its online exam, Acquia collaborates with Web Assessor, a secured testing environment.

I chose the second option which meant I had to install some software onto my computer and go through a substantial verification process. This included biometric baseline recording of the face and keystrokes in order to be able to authenticate when I start taking the test. I know, advanced stuff.

To a certain extent I understand the need for this highly secure exam taking environment that prevents people from cheating. However, Web Assessor could have made things easier for people to take these necessary steps. What do I mean by this?

For one, there are contradictory instructions on the site. In one place it says you don't need an external webcam and microphone and in another it says you are not allowed with the built in computer ones. So which one is it? In the end, I did it with my internal ones, so it is possible.

I finally got through the hurdles of installing the software, closing all my apps, creating the biometric baseline, etc to arrive to the booking of the exam. It was very flexible and I could book a time in the same day: that's what I did. I liked that very much. However, I had to wonder about the timezone, just select an hour and hope it corresponded to my timezone. There was no indication as to which one was being used. Luckily, it was the right one so there was no problem. Therefore, in case you are wondering, it will be the timezone you are in when you book.

The whole process of preparing for the exam with Web Assessor took about an hour. Not so much the settings themselves but reading and understanding what I have to do, what I can do and what I can't do.

But what about the test?

I'm going to go right out and say it: the test was hard. But I was expecting it to be hard because otherwise it's pointless. It had only multiple choice questions with only one correct choice most of the time. For the others, you have checkboxes instead of radios.

Timewise, I had 90 minutes which for me was enough. I even got a chance to review some questions to change the answers and submitted the exam with some minutes to spare. And I appreciated the option to flag questions I'd like to review later.

I can't really go into what questions I got or how they were formulated but they were well balanced with regards to the domains covered by the exam.

One problem I had though was with the code formatting. Some of the questions contained code snippets that were a bit tricky to read / understand. I believe a bit more effort can be dedicated to making them more readable - especially when they are in the available choices. I recommend therefore, if possible, putting all code snippets in code blocks and properly spacing them.

I submitted the test and immediately got my result. Passed. It gave me a very good feeling and made me happy to take it. One thing I was disappointed with was the fact that I couldn't see which questions I got wrong. This may be just me but I was left a victim to obsession over which were those battleground questions that made me think so much. But anywho, we move on and develop some more Drupal sites.

Congrats Acquia on this great new initiative!