I’m a Certified Ruby Programmer Silver

I’ve just passed the certification exam from Ruby Association. I’m not allowed to talk much about the test itself, but I leave my warning here: be prepared.

Ruby Programming Language

Copyright (C) 2008 Ruby Association LLC

I was surprised, when I found it wasn’t an easy exam. I haven’t studied anything, as I’m working with Ruby everyday. But I should. Unfortunately, the test requires you to memorize many methods from core classes.

Learn the Core API, mainly the Array, Hash, String, Fixnum, Float, Object, Kernel, Time and File classes. Study until you memorize their methods. There are many questions about Hashes, Strings and Arrays. Caution with methods that modify the objects itself and methods that don’t (mutable vs immutable).

Also, be sure that you have a good understanding of Ruby Regular Expressions.

It would be great if the certification had more questions about OO in Ruby, Strings vs Symbols, less API memorization, blocks being the functional guys, operator overloading, modules as mixins, Test::Unit, threads, duck typing, dynamic typing, …

I haven’t seen any question about polymorphism! Shame.

Just to be clear, I don’t care that much for certifications. There are many people discussing if certifications are good or not (at least here in Brazil). I won’t discuss it here. My decision to be certified was made, because I teach Ruby classes and, at least here in Brazil, certifications are important to instructors.

33 thoughts on “I’m a Certified Ruby Programmer Silver”

  5. Fabio,

    Congratulations on your Ruby certification. I am a Ruby enthusiast in the U.S. and am considering studying for the Ruby certification exam myself. I sent an email to the Ruby Association asking for recommendations on study guides or whether there were any practice exams but I haven’t gotten a response yet. Did you do any preparation for the exam yourself? If so, please describe it.

    –Mario

    Reply

  8. parabéns pelo certificado!

    estive na sua palestra no Rails Summit. muito foda sua palestra. Pena q o tempo acabou rápido (te expulsaram hauhahuuah)

    vc acabou com o Java 😦 hehe
    public static void main(String[] args) só uma vez na app 🙂
    vc disse q Java não é a melhor para tudo, vc poderia falar em que Java é melhor (pelo menos 1 exemplo)?
    vc prefere q uma linguagem possua tipagem ou não?

    só mais uma coisa. tem como você disponibilizar sua apresentação em algum site?

    muito obrigado

    Reply

  9. (@all: sorry for the pt-br comment!)

    @Leandro

    Espero que eu tenha “acabado” com o Java apenas como linguagem, hehehe.

    Eu tenho gostado bastante de usar Java para escrever partes do software que formariam a tal “base sólida”, já que ferramentas e compilador costumam fazer um pouco de diferença aqui. Ou até em pontos onde a performance é extremamente necessária, neste nível.

    Quanto a tipagem, tanto Java quanto Ruby, Python e Javascript possuem tipagem. Talvez a sua pergunta devesse ser reescrita como “Você prefere que uma linguagem tenha tipagem _explícita_ ou não?”

    Bom, a resposta é um pouco frustrante (eu sei), mas depende. É um assunto que pode ser discutido por horas e horas, mas cada tipo de tipagem (explícita/implícita, forte/fraca, estática/dinâmica) costuma ter a suas vantagens e desvantagens. Sempre depende do uso e de cada caso.

    A palestra está disponível no blog da Caelum: http://blog.caelum.com.br/2008/10/21/jruby-on-rails-no-rails-summit-latin-america/

    Reply
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  14. Grande Fabio, como vai?

    Sobre certificação ruby, gostaria de saber onde posso acessar mais informações sobre isso no Brasil, principalmente em São Paulo.
    Se já existe alguma empresa que realiza a prova…

    abraço,
    Alves.

    Reply

  16. Saludos desde Venezuela,

    Felicitaciones, Una vez que haz logrado la certificacion te dan algun kid de certificacion, diploma, credencial, pin, franela como lo hace Sun?

    Gracias

    Reply

  18. Do you recommend any books or reading material to clear the certification exam?

    I have not used Ruby but I am planning to learn the language and give the exam.

    Reply

  22. What is the longest time before you get your certification you say six months thats a bit long to be waiting, Will they give you a refrence on the phone ? So if your looking to prove this to someone they should e able to tell you this ? Seems a long time waiting for 6 months!

    Reply

  24. Hi Fabio,

    Congrats on your successful completion. Could you please tell me what is the cut-off for one to pass the Ruby Certification, I couldn’t find anything on it so far.

    Thanks..!!

    Reply

  25. Thanks for your blogpost. Can you tell us if you had to do bitwise and binary operations? Talking about 1 & 2, Array#pack etc..

    If you can’t answer this here, I would appreciate an e-mail 😉

    Reply

  26. Hello Fabio,
    I’m taking the Ruby silver certification, I would like to know where I can find the material for study and if there are tests to be able to exercise for the exam.
    Thanks to Thomas Caporuscio soon.

    Reply

    • Hello Tommaso,

      Unfortunately I can’t help much. It’s been many years since I did the exam, and at that time there weren’t many resources to help.

      Good luck!

      Reply

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