Brian On Software

Three weeks after passing TS 70-536, I sat down again for another two hours at our Prometric test center in order to pass yet another exam that leads towards the MCPD-EA designation.  As a matter of fact, I passed TS 70-529 this morning.  So far, all the TS exams I passed make my thermodynamic and chemistry exams look like a joke.  This exam wasn’t as hard as the 70-536, but the level of difficulty was still pretty high in my opinion.  For this exam, my employer  was once again kind enough to provide me a training book which was of a great help, but also of a great headache.  The book was the MCTS 70-529 Self-Paced Training Kit.  It was of great help because the content is basically a good collection of MSDN documentation categorized by exam objectives and sub-objectives.  As for the “headache” part, well, the book is filled with ugly C# code (some have compilation-error, others have their style so messed up that it’s hard to follow what the code is suppose to do) and mistakes that can lead you to error if you don’t search for the answer yourself on MSDN or elsewhere on the Web.  The funny thing is that the ugliness of the code and most of the mistakes applied only for the C# examples, as I assume most of the authors were more proficient in VB.NET instead.  Hey, nobody’s perfect.  So, two down and three to go.  My objective is to hopefully earn MCPD-EA before September 2008, as I’ll be starting my Master’s at that time.  So, in short, that means taking one exam every three weeks (Lord, help me!).  Next one on the list: 70-528.

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.

At Avanade, as in many consulting firms, we encourage developers in getting their Microsoft certifications.  Being passionate about technology, a lot of developers agree to reserve some time of studying and preparing for such certifications.  But how do you actually prepare for a brand new Microsoft beta exam when the resources and materials for a new exam are scarce due to the novelty of the technology?

A fellow co-worker at Avanade, Wayne Anderson, recently wrote a very detailed “map” on how to prepare to study for the new vague of Microsoft certifications targeting mostly the .NET Framework 3.5.  Interested?

Click here to read more on “Maximizing Microsoft Beta Opportunities“.

Here’s an interesting stat if you’re already an MCP or looking forward to achieve a couple of Microsoft certifications: Number of Microsoft Certified Professionals Worldwide.  It seems to be updated on a fairly regular basis.