William Scott

MS Certification 70-536 : Some general notes

2009-06-20T15:06:1000:00:00

MS Certification 70-536 : Some general notes on the test.

1.) Deprecated functionality is a red herring, important to be able functions that are deprecated, will be easy to spot the right(er) answer.

2.) Re-Read the question. Some of the questions are worded to screw you up.

3.) TBD...

MS Certification 70-536:Initial practice test results

2009-06-20T14:57:1800:00:00

MS Certification 70-536: initial practice test results

Took the first practice test without really studying… Holy crap I’m dumb. I’m not going to say how dumb but below are the areas I have to study in priority.

1.) Services, Threading and Application Domains: What??!!? I spent over a year building and maintaining a multithreaded windows service, I thought I would do better on this section.

2.) Serialization: Again, I thought I would do better on this because I’ve used it so much, some of the wording of the questions were tricky and I just screwed up.

3.) Reflection, Interop and mailing: Wow, anotherone I thought I was prepared for because I’ve worked a lot with reflection and running old VB6 Com+ objects using dot net.

4.) Code Security (CAS): I thought I’d do a lot worse on this because I’ve never used it before, but I did read a chapter about it last week so it’s in my head already.

5.) Configuration, installation and Management: Config file settings are pretty obvious.

6.) Globalization / Text : I would say text and string manipulations are 70% of a programmers job especially in the web world.

7.) Core : I’d be embarrassed if I didn’t nail the dot net fundamentals

MS Certification 70-536: Test Prep

2009-06-20T14:20:0400:00:00

MS Certification 70-536: Test Prep:

There are a ton of ways to prepare for this thing and everyone learns things differently. I’m a code guy, I need to see the code in action and understand what it does to actually retain anything. The problem with Microsoft tools is that they make it too damn easy to program: type an object name and press . and presto here’s your multiple choice test of methods then press ( and presto here are your parameters…. <thought optional>

Anyways, my strategy includes Tony Northrup 70-536 study guide, wrox Professional C#, the Measure-Up test and some code labs.

I used the Measure-Up test to identify my weaknesses, then list the areas from weakest to strongest and start from the top down. Hit each chapter in the study guide, then create a fake application for each technical area to drive home each concept.

Here are some links, I would recommend getting a used version of the study guide because the test is so old there should be a million old ones out there.

MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-536): Microsoft® .NET Framework Application Development Foundation, Second edition

Get the latest version of the C# reference because the 2.0 library material hasn't changed...

Professional C# 2008 (Wrox Professional Guides)

MS Certification 70-536: Why bother with MCP / MCTS / MCAD / ECT?

2009-06-20T08:16:5000:00:00

Why take the exam when you’ve been using dot net for a billion years? There are a few reasons and the most important is being revealed to me as I’m studying…

Reason 1:Growth (Getting out of the comfort zone)

The day to day tasks of a professional programmer are equivalent to lounging on the couch with the clicker instead of hitting the gym: build this report, change this form, fix this bug, and if your building a greenfield application, the challenging bits of the application are usually only about 10% of the entire codebase.

Most of the areas that I need to study the most of this exam are things that I never use. For example: Application Domains and Code Access Security are so far from mainstream lunch-pale programming that I very rarely ever think about them. But the fact is if your using an open source library or even a 3^rd party library, you should probably instantiate them in an AppDomain and give them only the permissions they need to operate.

It’s exposure like this that helps us grow our mind as well as war-chest of possibilities when we’re designing an application.

Reason 2: Confidence

Confidence! Tests are used to uncover our weaknesses and measure our mastery of the subject matter, obviously. Programming is all about confidence in your skills as a software developer. The confidence comes with experience, many years of building applications successfully, successfully overcoming the unexpected issues that are inherent in software development. How can you really be confident, if you’ve only been exposed to half of the framework? Studying for the tests helps round out the edges of the framework that are just not covered in your day-to-day programming tasks.

Reason 3: Work

This is usually everyone’s first motivation for taking the exam(s). It differentiates your Resume/CV from the pack. I’ve recently moved to London and the job market is Ultra-Competitive and I think it’s a sign of the times and will stay this way for a while and probably spread to the US eventually. The experienced developer/manager dismisses these tests as fluff because anyone can memorize a list of answers, the internet is flooded with “Brain Dumps” that include the exact questions on the test, memorize them and your home free, you don’t even need to know how to spell VB or C#. But the dreaded headhunter and/or worse the “bad” project manager looks at the MCP or MCTS as a primary factor for the shortlist.

MS Certification 70-536

2009-06-20T07:51:3200:00:00

I bought this book when it came out almost 4 years ago (70-536 study guide) and started studying for the test but always came up with some excuse not to take the exam (I’m too busy, it’s snowing, I don’t need it, etc.). A few months ago I resolved to take the test between jobs, and have been studying like a mad man for the past couple weeks. I’m going to post my interesting study tidbits on the blog to help myself retain it and hopefully to help others in some way. Also, if I have something incorrect, I’m sure I’ll get hammered, so I’ll lay it all out there even if I look like an idiot.

First Post:London Job Search

2009-06-03T23:18:0800:00:00

Might as well break the seal...

I figured I'd document my transition from American Software Consultant to European Software Contractor... But it's been almost a year since coming up with this idea so I'll have to catch up.

My wife is a full-timer for a financial and is relatively safe from the dreaded ax, so with her getting the benefits, I've always been inclined to be a consultant. I've resolved to continue being/running a consulting company (as I did in America).

The Job Search:
I first arrived in London last Sept. I don't know anyone, have no contacts and really didn't know where to start. Back home I would start by contacting friends and former colleagues for leads and usually that would be enough to land my next gig. Here I have to start from scratch.

One of the major things that I've found is that the London market is enormous! There must be about 300 headhunters in the City (one of the secrets is that many of them are owned by the same company... more about that later). So, first step, fish through the JobBoards. I found 3 major contracting job boards that most of the headhunters use.

www.jobserve.com
www.jobsite.co.uk
www.cwjobs.co.uk

Open reqs are posted in the morning and usually shortlisted by the afternoon, so it's a process of fishing for matching reqs, sending your CV, then calling to get your Resume(CV) noticed. If you call 1 day late, the job is usually gone.

It's tough to land the first contract, without a London company on your CV (resume), it's tough to make the shortlist. I've found that some companies are sometimes more responsive to resumes sent directly to the contact persons email rather than uploaded to the job board system but that's not always true, your mileage may vary.

Rates:
Rates here are mostly quoted as "per day" not "per hour" like in the states and the normal work day is 7.5 hours, but just like at home the normal workday can be expected to be 10 hours, but again, mileage may vary.

Resume/CV:
Resumes are called CVs here, CURRICULUM VITAE but the format is pretty much the same as in the states. The only exception is that the market is so competitive that your CV has to be tailored to the job your going for, otherwise you won't make the shortlist. If the Req describes the need for C# with Serialization, Ajax and Telerik controls, you better point out where you used each one of the specific technologies.

That's all for now, to be continued