Brian On Software

The road towards MCPD-EAD: I passed exam 70-536

June 19, 2008, 9:12 pm

This morning I passed the first exam (70-536) towards MCPD-EA which is the foundation exam that most of the other Visual Studio exams are built on. If you’re considering taking on this exam, I strongly suggest you to get a copy of the MCTS Self Paced Training Kit Exam focused on 70-536. Make sure you get the version that was printed in 2006, because I heard there were many errors (over 40 pages of them) in the previous release.

I started studying for this exam on May 22th and my strategy was to complete reading the book cover-to-cover in two weeks and then reserve an extra week and a half to practice concepts I didn’t fully understand simply by reading the material. My daily intake of cramming was about two hours on weekdays (woke up at 6AM every weekday and study/practice until 8AM before going to work) and four hours on the weekend. Just make sure you create your own study plan and see what fits best for you. Your best friend when studying for this type of exams is .NET Reflector; if it wasn’t for this tool, I think it would’ve taken me longer to understand how some less familiar classes work in the framework. Also, make sure you do (and re-do) all the practice questions and mock exams provided in the CD that comes with the book because even though it might not reflect entirely the real exam, you’ll sure learn more than a handful of tricks you can do with the framework.

As for the real exam, it was almost nothing compared to the review questions and the practice questions/exams provided with the book. As a matter of fact, you’ll be thrown tons of questions that might get one of your eyebrows up on a side, unless you took some time to apply your knowledge on hands-on exercises. I recommend you go crazy with your imagination and create your own set of exercises for at least a week (make it fun!). That being said, I suggest you to go wacko with concepts attached to security (code access and role-based security), cultures and globalization (I had so many questions related to these), serialization, invoking processes, threads and interoperability between managed and unmanaged code (COM, PInvoke, etc.).

If possible, I recommend you studying with a friend or in groups to leverage common knowledge and understanding on some concepts which might be hard to grasp alone. Also, have fun studying for it…remember that you don’t need to understand EVERYTHING in the framework…just enough to pass the exam with 70%.

Best of luck!

[UPDATE]

There’s an interview with three candidates for 70-536 that was recorded at TechEd 2008.

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9 Comments

Paul Rayner:

Congratulations Brian!

I have the same book, but have not been able to motivate myself to want to get the certification with everything else I have going on right now. The thought of spending ~60 hrs to prepare for the exam is a little overwhelming.

I hope that the cert helps you in the future (or at least that all the studying you did makes you more knowledgeable about the CLR and more productive as a result).

All the best,

Paul.
http://www.twitter.com/virtualgenius
June 21, 2008, 10:00 am
Brian Di Croce:

Heya Paul,

I totally agree with your comment that the time invested can seem overwhelming, especially when you think that there are now new certifications available for .NET 3.5, and that .NET 4.0 isn’t far behind as well. In other words, these kinds of certifications seem to be valid only for a brief season. On a personal level, I have never agreed with technology/vendor specific certifications because 1) they’re very temporary (mostly valid for 2-3 years), and 2) it doesn’t really merit an individual’s professionalism towards software development. In other words, a certification doesn’t really certify much because the qualities developed behind core skills such as designing and programming are what really certifies a developer’s professionalism in a project. Is your design testable? Can it be easily maintained and changed? Are object-oriented principles applied wisely and can you justify the reason why you decided to adopt this pattern instead of another? I believe that these are things we should really focus on to be better at our jobs….not whether you used a BufferedStream or MemoryStream object to read a stream of bytes.

What’s sad though, is that not many organizations value these former concepts. Some companies would hire a MCSD.NET individual over someone who isn’t certified just because of the title…but behind that title, more often than not, is someone who doesn’t really get the difference between software programming and software development.

To be honest with you, the only reason I’m going forward with these certifications is because 1) it’s fun to learn new way of doing things with the framework, 2) the opportunities it offers me to work on more challenging projects that demand someone with this kind of certification and 3) because my employer pays for them…so cheap…I know…

Paul, have you heard about the IEEE’s CSDP certification? Now, that’s THE certification that’s worth investing time and energy. I won’t tell you too much about it though…go to http://www.computer.org for more information.

Thanks for your comment,

Brian
June 21, 2008, 10:36 am
Gabe:

I agree with you Brian, however in this economic climate it I think it’s best to have both strong development skills and certification. In the end, it makes us more marketable.
December 23, 2008, 12:56 pm
Brian Di Croce:

@Gabe: You’re right, I haven’t thought about the economic climate. Here in Canada, it isn’t too bad though we are starting to feel some of the shock waves. Having hands-on experience on one hand and formal certifications on the other hand will surely put you in a position of being marketable and valuable to any organization…anywhere in the world. It’ll be interesting to see what 2009 has to offer the IT industry as it goes through this economic storm.
December 23, 2008, 1:16 pm
karthik:

Hi,

I am thinking of going for the 70-536 exam.I am a rookie right now with 4 months experience working on asp.net.I looked at other reviews for this book which said that this book is a little hard to understand for starters.so should I go for this book right away or are there any alternative books which is sort of a prerequisite?Any advice on this matter will be appreciated.
January 2, 2009, 5:11 am
Brian Di Croce:

@Karthik: I recommend you going with the book. It’s complete and thorough enough to help you understand the concepts needed not only to learn about the BCL but also to pass the exam as well. Best of luck and let me know how that went!
January 2, 2009, 6:24 am
karthik:

Thanks a lot brian.Ill let you know for sure…
January 2, 2009, 7:46 am
karthik:

uhh..one more help..I am having that book in pdf format in my computer which was given to me by my friend.so I dont have that CD that comes with the book.Do u know by channce know where I can find the contents of the CD on the net?Coz I dont want to buy the whole book now..
January 2, 2009, 8:00 am
Brian Di Croce:

@Karthik: I have no idea how to get the CD content, but I can tell you that you don’t need it to read and understand the material of the book. Honestly, I’ve never used the CD in the book. Just read the content that you don’t know much about and familiarize yourself with it by loading Visual Studio and hacking some code. Practice makes you better.
January 2, 2009, 8:06 am