My Thoughts on the Appcelerator Titanium Certification Program

If you're a keen user of Appcelerator's Titanium offering, as I am, you were probably as surprised as I was that Appcelerator is now offering training courses complete with TCAD (Titanium Certified Application Developer) certification.

The idea is interesting and I'd like to try it out and even run through the certified trainer program, but a few things are bugging me about the whole thing:

  1. Anyone who has used Titanium in the past can attest to the fact the documentation hasn't been that great. Yes, it's getting better but by no means is it fantastic yet. If Appcelerator is putting together the courseware (and it's costing you $1995.00 not including the $300 exam fee) I would want a guarantee that what you're getting is worth the money.
  2. Titanium Developer is still buggy at times, and at worst doesn't work at all in some instances. I have never been able to package an iPhone app for distrubtion using Titanium Developer - ever. Android support is much improved but even then, the emulator connection often drops out when starting up an app for testing.
  3. The price - $1995.00 is Microsoft level prices, and in an industry where even an MCSD/MCAD certification is ignored by many as a bit worthless, is the program going to be worth the money? I am sure the people running the courses are very knowledgable and Titanium is great subject matter, but most of us go through these courses and exams in order to further our careers. I just wonder if this certification is actually going to acheive that.
  4. The certification should, at $1995.00, come with a years subscription to the Titanium Professional membership. From what I can see on the website, it doesn't, and it should - this would sway me to paying for it almost immediately. Titanium has a great user community but some questions on the Q&A board are often tricky and go unanswered for long periods of time, if they are ever answered at all. Professional support for these just gone through the training would be a massive benefit to any individual, and to any company who is paying for their employee/s to go through the program.
  5. It's currently only available in California - difficult for any of us (like myself) who live outside the US. Hopefully there are plans afoot to offer courses in major cities around the world coming soon.

So would I be willing to fork up almost two thousand dollars for the training and certification? If it came with a Titanium Pro subscription for a year, the answer would undoubtably be yes. With that I could probably get help fixing my eternal problems with the packaging functions of Titanium Developer, and have a support base that would make me and my customers feel much safer with when developing enterprise-grade apps. I love using Titanium but I'm not sure if this is a case of too much, too soon; though I would love to be proved wrong.

Until then though, the jury is out.

If you are going through the program or have gone through the first round of training when it starts, I'd love to know what you thought of it all.



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Boydlee
Posts: 5
Comment
RE: TCAD (Titanium Certified Application Developer) certification
Reply #5 on : Sat November 19, 2011, 05:07:58
Hi Prem,

To get a good guage of the kind of questions on the exam (as I've taken it), you should go through the videos at the following link:

http://vimeopro.com/appcelerator/building-native-mobile-applications

I might try and write a blog post about the kind of thing you can expect to find on the exam if I get time (and if I can remember what the questions were like...).
prem kumar
Posts: 5
Comment
TCAD (Titanium Certified Application Developer) certification.
Reply #4 on : Sat November 19, 2011, 04:33:57
Recently i came across the titanium it was really good than the competitors in the market . I would like to get certified (TCAD ). But i am in india , when i checked their forums they mentioned as possibility of online exam are soon. I started preparing for the exam , but not sure what type of patterns it ill be. I am looking for ur help.

Thanks
Boydlee
Posts: 5
Comment
Re: re
Reply #3 on : Tue April 05, 2011, 02:23:59
I have been hearing good things now from people that have been through the certification course and out the other side, so I will definitely be taking it sometime in the near future.

Yes, some of the documentation is still not great and yes, some of the component implementations are still a bit flakey (indexes on attributes in XML don't work for example) but on the whole I tend to look past those things because of all the favourable parts of Titanium and the speed with which I can develop apps.
Tim Stevens
Posts: 5
Comment
Re:
Reply #2 on : Tue March 22, 2011, 17:30:45
I can agree with what the blog author is saying. Appcelerator's documentation is inadequate at best and in some cases it's actually incorrect. The developer is buggy and some components are flaky.

However, I would never pay $2,000 for support when their documentation and software are so sketchy to begin with.
Scott Schwarzhoff
Posts: 5
Comment
thanks for your feedback...
Reply #1 on : Tue February 08, 2011, 07:08:34
Hey Boydlee -

Thanks for your feedback. A couple items to clarify:

- Separating training and certification, the certification component is $300 (and included in the course that we're running). The majority of the course cost is in the training itself. So, if you feel like you're already at a reasonable level where you'd be able to take an exam on basic proficiency, then you can always do that. If you'd like the extra assistance, then the course + certification option is there.

- This month's course is near us so we can ensure optimal quality the first time out. We're putting a ton of work into making this a high-quality experience. We are going to blow this wide open going forward into courses all around the country... and all around the world (we have a few global training partners signed up that are going to be at this first event to get their training stripes). We're also looking at web-based delivery options. We'll post a full schedule toward the end of the month.

- On Titanium Developer, we heard you! That's why we acquired Aptana. It's a MASSIVE improvement in our tooling plans and it'll come with a full debugger where you can set breakpoints, have auto-completion, etc. And this will be free.

We've got a lot more in store for the product, training, extensions to the platform, etc. Thanks for your support and the feedback!

Scott Schwarzhoff
sschwarzhoff at appcelerator dot com
VP, Marketing & Developer Relations
Appcelerator