Last week, I watched a webcast about Accredited Symbian Developer (ASD) from Symbian. You can still watch it now because the link is still available.

What is ASD? Majinate, the company who runs ASD certification, explains:

The Accredited Symbian Developer scheme is designed to set and objectively measure the standard of engineering competency required for developers and engineers to differentiate themselves from novice Symbian OS developers.

I myself have been an Accredited Symbian Developer since last year. From my experience, I would say the exam is not that easy. We do need hands-on Symbian OS development before we can pass it. The questions also vary from several different topics. They categorize them into 18 areas, such as Active Objects, Descriptors, Cleanup Stack, etc.

Accredited Symbian Developer

If you are looking for a career path in Symbian OS, I recommend taking the exam. The certificate is not as popular as Sun or Microsoft yet, but it has been recognized in the smart phones industry.

At the end of the webcast, Symbian Press launched a new book, The Accredited Symbian Developer Primer, from Jo Stichbury and Mark Jacobs. The book will help you preparing ASD exam. I haven’t read the book yet, but I had a chance to review one chapter of the book. Thanks a lot to Jo Stichbury who gave me the opportunity.

Update (18-Oct-2006): Jo and Mark, the author of The Accredited Symbian Developer Primer, has released some sample questions aboout the exam at their web site, Meme Education. Check it out. It contains 48 questions (and answers, of course).