What value do technical certifications offer developers—and are they worth the trouble? We’ve posed these questions before and gathered the opinions of some of our expert contributors and top industry analysts. Now we’d like the answers to come from programmers on the front lines, the people who know the development sector best: you, the Builder.com reader.

That’s where our Developer Certification Survey comes in.

Developers are feeling the economic pinch when it comes to technical certifications these days, with fewer funds available to support obtaining them. Yet the depressed job market makes a certification edge more important than ever. This paradox has done nothing to quell the ongoing debate over whether certifications actually demonstrate valuable technical skills or are merely token credentials used to simplify staff management issues. We want you to weigh in on the importance of certification, as well as a few other cert topics, by answering our survey questions.

We’ll aggregate the results of this survey and share them with you in the coming weeks. The data will provide a snapshot of developer certification, which will help you better gauge your standing within the development community. Moreover, this survey will help guide future Builder.com certification content by telling us which issues—and which certs—are drawing the most attention. In both cases, the more we know, the more we can give you.

Take the survey today.