Linux Foundation Node.js certificate (Part 2)

In this most anticipated second part of this article series covering the Linux Foundation Node.js certificate, we cover the second part of the course designed to prepare people for the certificate exam proper.

The first thing that struck me about this second part was that there is a stark difference between the depth of the reading material and the lab exercises at the end of a section. While a given section could contain several pages of very detailed information about a topic (e.g. Streams), you would then get two lab exercises that cover the very basics of that topic. I do not think that would help prepare a person for what they would face in the exam. Unless of course, the exam did not go in-depth into every topic either.

The written material itself is quite high quality. In every chapter I was learning something completely new. A good tip for fellow course takers would be take studious notes, as there may certainly be something in there that might be of interest in the future. They also make a point to link to further reading materials for certain topics if the subject may be so broad as to be unwieldy to fit into one section of a course.

The quizzes presented after each topic remain the same, 2-4 questions to make sure you were paying attention. You are allowed to re-take them as much as you wish and do not seem to prevent you from continuing in the course if you do not take them. Although you do get a seperate free certificate for going through all the sections of the course, and I'm guessing you will need to complete the quizzes in order to receive that certificate.

While the first section of the course mostly focused on Node.js basics such as the module system and debugging, this section covered topics of interest for back-end developers, such as buffers, the file system and the OS module. For people less familiar with JavaScript I would recommend going through the lab exercises (however simple they may be) so as to help develop a muscle memory for the subjects.

I am now looking into booking a time for the final certificate exam. The next article in this series will cover that experience. Wish me luck!