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Quick Guide how to become a Google Certified Associate Android Developer

image In this article, I will briefly describe the process of obtaining a certificate of novice android developer. I’ve been working on android development for more than 4 years, but so far I haven’t bothered to get any corresponding certificate, although I’ve got a couple of Java certificates. And it happened so for one simple reason - certificates of android developers issued any kind of company, except for the actual company of the developer of this very Android. The above-mentioned Java certificates were issued by Oracle, which makes their presence at least a little meaningful.

And finally it happened - Google has opened its certification program for Android developers. But even here it was not without a fly in the ointment - so far only the certificate of a novice android developer is available. I don’t need it at all, but curiosity and a desire to collect have pushed me to get it. The usefulness of obtaining certificates as such is a great topic for holivar. I will touch upon this question a little at the end of the article, but for now I will proceed to the description of the process.

For the first time, the certification program was announced by Google on I / O in May 2016. Somewhere in June, it became possible to pre-register for certification. It was necessary to fill the form on the site, then wait for the letter of happiness. I didn’t wait for letters, so the next time I visited the site sometime in July, there was already a form allowing you to select the desired date for the start of certification. I chose the period from August 1 to August 7 and went further on my business. I did not receive any confirmation, so I went to the site again closer to the date and filled out the mold again.

And here the first letter finally arrived, which informed me that Udacity, namely through it, certification is carried out, is aware of my desire to get certified during the specified period, but due to the large influx of those who wish, I will have to wait another week from the desired date. Since I was not in a hurry, I closed the letter and forgot about it. The week was somewhat stretched out and I received the following letter on August 23. It asked me to make sure that I meet all the requirements, and then begin the process of obtaining a certificate.
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At the moment, I hope there is no more of this preliminary tentative. And it's time to tell where to go and what to do. So, first you can go to the site dedicated to certification. There is nothing particularly useful on it, except for brief information, links to training and buttons for enrolling in a course. If you think that your development skills for android leave much to be desired, or are completely absent, then I recommend going to learn a little. The link from the site leads to the Udacity page dedicated to the development for android. When you click the Sign Up button, we’ll get from the Google page dedicated to certification to a similar Udacity page.

Here, he signs in sufficient detail what exactly will be asked at the exam and what, in principle, the candidate will encounter. Here the cost is announced. The certificate costs $ 149, but currently there is a discount (it used to come across that until the end of the year, but now I don’t see). In view of the discount, you will have to pay $ 99. That is not so much when compared with Oracle.

The exam consists of two parts: the “coding project” and the interview with the Google developer. Why in quotes? Because there is not much to write there. An almost finished project will be given, in which it will be necessary to make changes and additions. But about the details later.

I will consider in more detail what is required of the candidate:


In general, no special surprises. Yes, the interview will also be in English.

We now turn to the process. Certification consists of the following steps:


So let's go point by point.

check in
The registration process is completed quickly and without problems.

Payment
What exactly the payment is made through I don’t remember exactly, but I paid with a card. So most likely there is quite a banal form of payment. In any case, the process did not cause difficulties.

Download the project
Before downloading the project, and generally before the beginning of the certification process I recommend to prepare a working machine. Those. Update Android Studio and all related items. The project in the archive takes several hundred kilobytes. Downloaded quickly, the studio opens without problems.

Write the code
And here we have reached the most interesting part - “writing an application”. As I said before, there’s not much to write. I will not describe in detail the project, what it does and how it works, since most likely this information is not subject to disclosure. And most likely the number of various projects is quite large. I can say that the project is a simple application, covering a large part of the Android Framework. Those. on the one hand, it covers many areas in which the candidate must demonstrate his knowledge, on the other hand there is nothing complicated. It took less than a day for me to make all the changes, test and fix bugs. All you need to add about 5 features to the project, fix about 5 bugs and write a test.

We send the project
When you find that your project is perfect, you can send it back. We clean from garbage (optional, but it does not hurt), archive, send.

But as I mentioned above, a PDF with a photo / scan of an identity document should be attached to the project. For example right or passport. And here I find it difficult to say what exactly is suitable. I have not been living in Russia for a year and a half, so my main document is a passport. My rights are local. Whether a Russian passport or Russian rights will work, I find it difficult to say. Therefore, it will probably be better to clarify this before payment. Well, if you have a passport, then it definitely fits.

Expectation
I paid to participate in the certification on August 28 in the evening. Sent task 30 August. On the same day I received a letter confirming the receipt of the project and assuring that it will be evaluated within 45 days. On September 28, a letter was sent asking you to confirm your identity again by sending documents through a website. It is not difficult for me - confirmed. October 18, another letter with the "good news" that my project is about to appreciate. And finally, on October 28, a letter saying that I had passed my test. It's time to move on to the interview.

Interview Recording
The last letter contained a link to the site where you can set the date of the interview. And then I was waiting for a light shock. For the next year there was no available time. Having scratched a turnip, I asked for the support of Udacity, is it a joke or a bug. They answered that at the moment everything is taken, but they are working on increasing the number of interview slots. Will be reported as soon as so immediately. Yes, yes, so I believed it. He began to visit the site every day and was eventually rewarded by the fact that on November 2 he noticed the available time and signed up for November 4. I only received a notification from Udacity on November 9th. What in general was not very surprised.

Interview
So an interview. It is conducted through a site. In this case, something must be installed on the computer. Therefore, a reference is better to visit in advance. At work, for example, I did not manage to switch to it, only from my home computer. For the interview you need to have with you all the same identity document. There should also be a webcam. And of course the microphone and speakers / headphones. They want to see you and hear you. The interview itself took me about 10 minutes. The interviewer was polite and pleasant. First asked to show a passport. Then he asked 5 questions. First I asked what was difficult in the project. Then he asked a series of questions on a specific implementation. Since it was a long time ago, in the process I looked at the code and commented on the go, what I see. If you are not sure that you can, it is best to refresh your memory of what was happening and what was done.

Getting a certificate
The next day I received a letter saying that now I can proudly wear the title of Google Certified Associate Android Developer. It was also mentioned that another letter will soon come in which they will send me my “digital badge” (digital badge), which is actually a certificate. And they will also tell you where to shove him what to do with him. It seems you can rejoice, but for good reason this article was written on November 24th. Just today I received a letter with this very icon and instructions to it. In the interim, we had to once again disturb technical support, first with Udacity, and then with Google.

The icon by the way looks like this.

Thus, the whole process took me almost 3 months and cost $ 99. I satisfied my curiosity, I received the badge in the collection. So I reached my goals. And I also got a new experience that I shared with you in this article. The certificate seems to be valid for 3 years (I saw such information before, now I didn’t see it).

By the way, for comparison, I received the last Oracle certificate I received in 3 days (except for a month of preparation) and 250 euros. The certificate is unlimited.

As promised, in the end I will give a little bit of a fan. Many people wonder why these certificates are needed at all and who looks at them. In general, on the one hand, they are not needed. On the other hand, the presence of a certificate can catch the eye of HR, especially in a situation with a novice developer. The presence of the certificate shows that the candidate has at least some minimal knowledge in the area of ​​interest, as well as the ability to achieve the goal. Personally, I received my first certificate (Oracle Certified Programmer Java SE6) when I decided to retrain from C developer to Java or Android developer. One of the goals was just to confirm that I know something in Java, since the previous entries in the resume only reflected experience with C and Assembler. The second goal was to “expand and deepen” their knowledge in Java. And that's just the second goal I more than achieved. In the process of preparing for certification, I discovered many new things in the Java world that I hadn’t come across in the books I read.

The second certificate I received six months ago for the collection and again in order to expand my knowledge. The certificate is similar, only now in Java 8. An inquisitive reader will say that they could have taken and learned what they needed. And he will be right. But as you know, the presence of a whip (loss of money for certification attempts) and carrots (piece of paper to the collection) make the training much more motivated.

Well, as I said, I received the certificate of android developer purely for the collection and out of curiosity. He did not bring me new knowledge. I will wait for the next levels of certification.

So getting certificates or not everyone thinks he decides for himself. I can only wish success to those who decide on it.

PS At all stages of certification, Google and Udacity apologized for the delays and vowed to accelerate in the future. I hope that will happen.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/316426/

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