Java certifications. Is it worth getting Java-certified? Let’s talk about that today.
Today, we’re talking about Java certifications. Are they useful? Is it worth you spending the money getting Java-certified?
The short answer is yes it is.
But seriously, it is very important to look at these things, really from a strategic point of view and think is it it worth me spending the money to get Java-certified?
Firstly, you make the decision whether it is, but secondly, is the certification I’m taking going to be approved by and accepted by the industry? There is a lot of certificates that look great and they’ve got great marketing behind them, but if the industry in general, in other words your prospective employers they don’t recognize that as something that is of value, then you’re probably wasting your money.
The great thing is the Oracle Java certification process is industry recognized. In general, if you’ve got a Java certification form Oracle for, basically for Java, that’s really gonna stand yourself in good stead and it’s gonna be seen a something really valuable, it’s gonna really add to your resume. But there’s a lot of other certifications out there that aren’t.
Now, one of the negatives about getting Java certified through Oracle is the cost. Now, I haven’t got the exact prices but I think last time I checked it was around about 300 plus US dollars to become certified. So you might look at that and think, “Wow that’s really expensive.”
But factor in a couple of things when you’re deciding on if this is too expensive for you. Firstly, it’s pretty hard to cheat for Java certification. And the reason is that you need to take an exam to get your Java certification, and in the case of Oracle’s that requires you to basically attend a physical place, a university’s is a common place, or college, and someone has to watch you take that, and you need to prove who you are, show those credentials.
So for a lot of those reasons, it’s much harder to actually cheat. And if you think about it, also, the fact that basically they need to get someone there to actually watch you take the test, presumably they’re being paid for that, so there’s a portion of that cost that is being outlayed for you to take that exam.
Then because of that, because of that process it’s being harder to cheat and because of the contents of the certification and what the contents in the exam can be quite hard, if you haven’t studied Java properly, this, it’s seen as a positive thing. So if you’ve got that certification, it proves that you know Java to a certain level and it proves that you have yourself taken that exam. And you know, you haven’t cheated your way because if you think about it, online exam, let’s just just assume that where there’s a certification out there that was online only, you didn’t need to prove who you were, you could just spend the money, take it.
Now, wants to say you didn’t cheat, what’s to say you didn’t just look up the answers as you went through it all and you know, “Wow, I got 100% wow, how good am I? Why when in reality, you cheated. So an employer, chances are, they’ll be aware of that and they will validate any certifications you have in the sense that they’ll check and see where it comes from. So in other words, if you got, if you say you’re Java certified from x, y, z company, someone when you’re going to get that programming job would likely at some point, try and verify x, y, z company to see whether they are reputable.
But in the case of Oracle, getting back to the Java Oracle program, that certification, Java certification, it’s a recognized thing because Oracle being the creators of Java, or they are the owners, not the creators, but is basically thus seen as being a positive thing they’re seen there’s something that people can adopt and it seems it’s a great thing to add to your resume is what I’m trying to say.
So I think personally, it’s worth the money if you’re struggling to get your first programming job, or you want to get a better job, and there’s multiple levels of certifications as well. And the other thing to keep in mind is that with the release of JDK 11 there’s now a newer course that’s just coming out fairly recently, I think came out late March 2019.
That’s the Java 11 certification. Now with my little programming Academy, I’ve already got a Java certification programme, a best selling Java course on you to me. So there’s a link in the description, you can click on that to check that course out in more details and that covers JDK eight, in other words Java version eight. And that was the stable version of Java for many years. And these days now that the newer versions of Java have come out, Oracle have now updated their training and very recently have released the Java 11. So a Java 11 certification process. And I am actually in the process of creating a new course for that.
So in the next, probably the next six to eight weeks, as of the date I’m shooting this video, I’ll have that course released. So if you’re looking to get Java 11 certified, then I suggest you hang on and wait for that course and that will help you go through the process and without giving too much, I don’t want to make this a salesy type video, but what I want to let you know is that in terms of the type of course that I’m generating for Java 11, I’m focusing on what you need to know.
So I’ve got two Java courses already, I’ve got the Java Masterclass and the Java Crash Course. Now they teach you how to use Java. And they’re aimed for someone who’s got no experience, how to learn programming, how to learn Java. The Java certification course that I’m working on, is going to teach you how to pass the exam. So it’s not trying to teach your job, it’s trying to teach you what you need, the the gotchas, the tricks and techniques that they use in some of the exam questions are going to be covered in that course.
So keep that in mind that it’s very important that you know these things when you go into those exams. But anyway, we’ll talk more about that in future videos. Getting back to Java certification now, in general, I think it’s very valuable for the reasons that I’ve outlined, because it’s seen as something of value by the industry in general, adding it to your resume can be the difference between you getting a job and not getting a job. So I think it’s worthwhile if you’ve got the funds and you can afford it, make it a priority to get Java certified and it’s going to be something you’ll have forever.
And the other thing is even in the future versions of Java actually come out, you can upgrade your certification to the newer version at a cheaper price than paying for the full price for the exam, again, for that certification for that version again. So it can still be valuable right now to get Java eight training, and you’ll pay a much cheaper price to upgrade that to Java 11, and the good thing is, then you can say, you’re certified in both Java eight and Java 11.
So you can see there’s pros and cons there.
I hope that helped, If you’ve got any questions, feel free to leave a comment, and I’ll get back to you.