Defold developer certification

Feature requests
#1

I think it would be nice if there was some kind of Developer Certification from Defold/King you can achieve.

I happen to know a lot of people who love to get as much certifications as they can. They put these certifications on their LinkedIn profile and such. This way more people will know about Defold as well, which is also nice!

For example there can be three kind of certifications:

Basic Developer: You have a form with a lot of multiple choice questions. Once you have achieved x% from 100% you are a Basic Developer.

Once you have enough experience you can apply for the Advanced Developer and the Expert Developer Certification. These can also be achieved by questions, activity on the forum and of course the time you’ve worked with Defold.

Just throwing it out here! :slightly_smiling_face:

Here are some examples of existing ones:
https://www.mendix.com/blog/become-mendix-certified-developer/
https://certification.unity.com/
https://developers.google.com/training/certification/associate-android-developer/

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#2

Interesting idea! So far I know of only a handful of companies that specifically have asked for Defold expertise. The engine marketshare is still quite small, especially compared to Unity. For unity I can really understand why they have different kinds of certifications, but for Defold I’m not so sure if it would be worth the effort for us.

I’ve been a professional developer for quite some time and hobbyist programmer for basically all of my life, but I don’t have a single certificate so my experience is limited in this area.

@Oleg_The_Evangelist, do you have any experience with the Unity certification programs? Anyone else with input on this?

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#3

Opinions on Unity etc. certification for game dev

I remember hearing stories about how new coders would pay to go to bootcamps to pass certification, and then mostly forget everything they memorized. The certificates still got them extra money, some corporations required certain certification. This was in like the 90s. But seems nowadays they are not important even in super corporate places with the anecdotes being that people with certificates never get the job.

It could still be interesting to make some “Defold Koans” as a self-test of Defold knowledge.

1 Like
#4

Those links paint a bleak picture for the importance of certificates… I can agree with “I prefer a portfolio of games over a list of certificates”. Being able to show hands on experience with a piece of software or language is in my mind worth a whole lot more than a certificate.

Yes, some kind of self-test could be interesting. That’s worth considering.

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#5

I can imagine a “Defold Challenge” mirroring the the Google Digital Workshop format, where you can read a section of the manual and then answer questions based on that. Covering core concepts like Message Passing, Value Animations, Collections, Input Handling and Rendering pipeline.

It would be a compliment to the regular tutorials and a good way to answer some of the FAQ.

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#6

but but but… Unity Certification was invented back in the days as a pure service revenue source. Then Unity sales folks were given targets on what do they have to sell. No one ever designed the Unity Certification to bring any value (except in some Asian markets for local reasons), to my knowledge.

That’s said, a Defold developer quiz may be a fun project to implement. Obviously it may out a PDF with participant’s name.

1 Like
#7

This is pretty much what I had in mind. It’s not necessary to follow a complete paid course right now.

That’s a fair point! You can achieve these certificates without being able to create a full published game for instance. But I still think it’s nice to have some sort of certification that shows you have the knowledge on how to use Defold.

Yet again, this was just something to discuss. It might be more useful in the future when there’s a larger userbase and such. Might be something to keep in mind. :slight_smile:

#8

What better way to show this than through a game? The certificate shows that you have theoretical knowledge. I believe that being able to show that you have hands on practical experience is worth more.

2 Likes
#9

Right now, Defold is more for indie developers/smaller companies. But when Defold is gaining more users, bigger companies are probably going to use this engine. If I apply for a job at a company, they still want to see the certificates I’ve achieved. Of course, showing the games you’ve made is often better but there are also reasons why you can’t show the projects you’ve worked on. A confidentiality statement for example. If I can show them some sort of certificate that I have enough knowledge I will have a greater chance of getting hired.