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.

Happy birthday, Perl

Tony Long celebrates Perl's twentieth anniversary. But his copy editor must have been writing ironically when he headed the post, "Perl Simplifies the Labyrinth That Is Programming Language." I've written smallish apps in Perl, and I consider it an effective tool, but for me it will always be the Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister.