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Not to be too pragmatic, but who is being certified these days? I've only met about 1-2 people in the last 5 years that had any Java certification at all. Now with Oracle purchasing SUN, how many will actually go to help build the certification test with this survey? I would be curious to know actually.

I'm not a big fan of certifications, but as they go, I liked some of the sun certifications (programming/JEE). They are quite challenging and questions are more about understanding than dumb reproduction. I know guys gettng MS certified by studying 1 evening without using the technology at all. Don't think you'd do that with these. Don't see why the oracle acquisition matters here.

Certifications are completely useless, IMO. I'm yet to see anyone other than large corporate non-technical management who cares about them when hiring. If it's a personal challenge for you, that's fine, but as a career builder, hmmm, no thanks.

As a career builder, any degree, certification, title or whatever you call it is somewhat irrelevant in any field where you produce money thinking creatively (like software development)...that's just a hint to help HR officers to know WHO to trust some asset like time, money, a customer or a proyect. I see the value of certification in a more somethat simplistic (but true at the end of the day) phenomena of supply and demand: When programmers are in demand you can barely know how to add 2 numbers together and you will be hired as a senior programmer. When market is shrinking, you have another pin to distinguish yourself againts another fellow programmer to take over your job.

Certifications are completely useless, IMO.

Why are they completely useless? As one of the many, many puzzle pieces that you collect in your carrier I find them to be most valuable. It's just like that single subject you took in University, or that single book you read.Of course, just because you got an A for "Operating Systems 101", doesn't make you the OS guru of this world and just because you read "design patterns", doesn't make you the best programmer ever. But... All of these piece by piece, step by step, helped you in becoming a better overall developer. It's the same with certificates. Each one contributes a tiny pearl of knowledge and occasionally experience (as in the case of the SCJD exam) to your skills repository. If you think certificates are useless, you might as well say that reading technical books is useless or that taking subject in University is useless. The only thing potentially wrong with certificates is people attaching too much value to a single one. That's however more of an interpretation issue than something to do with the actual certificate.

As a certification, it should not just contains some basic programmtic question. Most time, the certification can be got just after some trainning even you didn't do any development.For experience developer, they don't need it to show their skill, but for newbies. That is why it has been an alias of newbies.

People are worried to take any certifications from Sun Java late 1.5 because its too much changing with various Frameworks in the Market. There is not clarity on Java SE or Java EE or Java ME certifications as against the Core Java which is dominating always right from its first day. The other problem is corporates are worried to migrate from Java 5 (first let Sun/Oracle clarify or rectify the version no. conflict, 1.5 = 5.0, absolute stupidity) to Java 6 or after 1 year to Java 7 as these >=7 versions release without no major features or minimal/splitted features. It would be worth accumulating all stuffs and release into a single major release and provide certificates on that so that the developers/architects can carry their certificates for few years. I am not saying they are not to release upgrades or next versions very quick, but they should mind the version gap vs. features.