29 December 2007

Exam prep: 1

I'm taking the opprtunity of the holiday slack time to restart my exam preparation for certification as an MCPD: Windows Developer. I currently hold an MCAD, so I need take only one exam to bump up to the next cert. I had been studying in August and September, but I let myself get distracted, so it's almost like I'm starting over. I've set myself a new goal of passing exam 70-552 by April 30.

I'm reading selected chapters of Jeffery Richter's CLR via C#, largely for background and a refresher on concepts like boxing and unboxing. The heavy-lifting prep is working through Microsoft's self-paced training books MCTS 70-536, MCTS 70-526, and MCPD 70-548. Fortunately, all of these are available through Safari, albeit at two slots a piece. I'm not looking forward to the long units on crypto and security, because, try as I might, it's an area I find it hard to get excited about.

1 comment:

David Gorsline said...

A slight course correction: I thought about the work I've been doing for the last few years, and what I'm likely to be doing in the future, and I decided that an MCPD: Web Developer credential makes more sense. To prepare for the upgrade exam 70-551, two of the three training guides are effectively the same: MCTS 70-536, MCTS 70-528, and MCPD 70-547.