Vue School Certification: My Experience, Tips, and Final Thoughts

If you are about to take the Vue School certification issued by certificates.dev, or still deciding whether it’s worth it, here I share some advice, my experience, recommendations, and finally a conclusion.

The last 4 years of my career have been all about Vue.js, combined with Python or Golang. Although I’ve also worked with React.js, I never really got attached to that framework. Inevitably, I always ended up choosing Vue, not only because it’s reactive by nature, but also because I truly believe it’s one of the best frameworks to build with JavaScript — and here’s why:

• It doesn’t overcomplicate things.
• It has good, extensive documentation.
• A large and active community.
• Security practices: Vue has an entire page dedicated to explaining what to avoid and highlighting its built-in security strengths.

The simplicity of Vue makes a big difference. For example:

React: I feel it abuses ternary operators, which can turn into a nightmare when working at big companies where you face a mess of code just for conditional rendering:

function Item({ name, isPacked }) {
  return (
    <li className="item">
      {isPacked ? (
        <del>
          {name + ' ✅'}
        </del>
      ) : (
        name
      )}
    </li>
  );
}

export default function PackingList() {
  return (
    <section>
      <h1>Sally Ride's Packing List</h1>
      <ul>
        <Item isPacked={true} name="Space suit" />
        <Item isPacked={true} name="Helmet with a golden leaf" />
        <Item isPacked={false} name="Photo of Tam" />
      </ul>
    </section>
  );
}

Vue: lets you do the same thing in a much more elegant and readable way:

<template>
  <section>
    <h1>Sally Ride's Packing List</h1>
    <ul>
      <Item :isPacked="true" name="Space suit" />
      <Item :isPacked="true" name="Helmet with a golden leaf" />
      <Item :isPacked="false" name="Photo of Tam" />
    </ul>
  </section>
</template>

<script setup>
import Item from './Item.vue'
</script>

After 3 years of working mainly with Vue, I came across the opportunity to get certified in this technology since my company was paying for it. I accepted the offer and began preparing.

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Preparation

It took me about 3 months because I made sure to complete all the training, which were mostly coding practices, while still working full-time. Honestly, it’s not the most fun activity to study for an exam after 8 hours of daily work — but it’s doable. If you want it, you can make it happen.

There are two certifications:

Level 1: Focused on the fundamentals of Vue.js, covering topics such as:

• Creating a Vue Application
• Reactivity Fundamentals
• Template Syntax
• Event Handling
• Form Input Binding
• Watchers
• Lifecycle Hooks
• Template Refs
• Components
• Slots
• Transitions
• Plugins
• Custom Directives
• Vue Router
• Ecosystem

Level 2: Advanced concepts and practices, with a focus on TypeScript and best practices to avoid building fragile applications. Topics include:

• Composables
• Testing
• Render Function and Virtual DOM
• Advanced Props and Events
• Provide/Inject
• Global State Management
• TypeScript
• SSR
• Performance
• A Couple of Notes
• Options for Securing Your Senior Developer Examination

I’ll say this often: if you’ve already enrolled, I strongly recommend completing every single training exercise provided for each level.

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The Exam

The exam is proctored, which means you’re being monitored the entire time through your webcam. Any suspicious behavior, like looking away too often or checking your phone, is not allowed.

Requirements:

• Webcam: your face will be recorded during the entire test.
• Microphone: audio will also be recorded.
• ID: needed to register for the exam.
• A closed room: they’ll ask you to rotate your camera 360° to ensure no irregularities.
• Silence: no background music allowed.

The exam has 2 parts:

Multiple-choice questions

You get 30 minutes for this part. They’re fairly straightforward (like “low-hanging fruit”). If you finish early, you don’t get extra time for the coding section, so use the chance to double-check your answers.

Coding challenge

You get 105 minutes. This is where you really need to apply your understanding of the concepts. My recommendation: make sure you’ve done all the training exercises, because they prepare you for exactly this.

At the end of the challenge, once you meet the success criteria, you’ll also be asked to fix a bug left intentionally in the code. That’s the final step before finishing.

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What If You Fail?

You get two attempts. If you fail the first, you’ll have another shot with better preparation.

If you run into technical issues during the exam, the platform will give you a free retake.

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Is It Worth It?

This is subjective. Some developers who never took the certification might still be more skilled than many who did. Like most things in life, it depends on how you play your cards — luck and timing also play a role.

In my case, it helped me land a contract with another company as a contractor. I worked on migrating from Bootstrap to modern Vue 3 Composition API + Vuetify + TypeScript. The certificate plus my Vue expertise made the competition almost irrelevant when applying for the project.

I’ll put it this way: in life, sometimes it’s better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.

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