While the study guide is minimal, it is intended to be. And the topic list is essentially your list of what to learn in order to pass. Don't worry about the big topics, but look at the small ones, rate yourself on a scale of 1-3.
- I know it
- I kind of know it/I need a little bit of review
- I have no clue/I want to build it to see if I understand it
Forget the 1's
Start learning the 2's
Work your way into the 3's
I would say that this advice could be followed for any of the certification exams.
As for the developer certification specifically, the Force.com Fundamentals is good. The Force.com workbook. And don't overlook the online help and training. When the exams are reviewed, the first point of reference for any question that needs to be modified/clarified is the help and training.
A few weeks before your exam, go through the current release training. Every question for every exam is reviewed every single release. If you began your prep in Winter 13, but your exam will be on Spring 13, you might be relying on old information.
Finally, I always caution people about practice exams. Because of the always changing nature of the platform (and by extension the certification exams), that person who wrote those practice questions a year ago, may have been spot-on correct then, but a year later they may be out of date. Unless the questions you are using list the release they were written for, don't rely on a successful practice exam to tell you you will pass our certification.
I teach our Developer curriculum (including DEV401). That's my job at SFDC right now. Those people who go on and get their Developer Certification after DEV401 invariably tell me that it was a huge benefit to take the course. Everyone who teaches it themselves has to be Developer certified, as well as go through our rigorous instructor certification process. So if that is an option for you. Yes. Take DEV401. You will not regret it.
This certification program is still in beta - actually it's available to everyone from today, I got the email a couple of hours ago.
The reason this certification doesn't have a passing score is because Salesforce are still evaluating the responses from the beta participants. Based on the responses, Salesforce will lock in the final content of the exam as well as set the passing score.
I believe this will get updated very shortly, given that the beta participants still haven't received their results.
Here is the FAQ page for the new certifications.
Update:
The following exams do not provide immediate results because they
require evaluation by a team of experts:
- Salesforce Certified Platform Developer II programming assignment
- Salesforce Certified Force.com Advanced Developer programming assignment
- Salesforce Certified Technical Architect review board
Source
Best Answer
I followed the transition track from advanced developer to the platform developer II exam. So I did not take the platform developer 1 exam, but got the certification all the same.
Take into consideration that these exams are reviewed and extended every release and it is thus likely that the questions on developing lightning will increase and so will their detail or complexity from what it may be now.
Having done nearly all other certifications I would interpret it like this: