Now With 50% More Geek!

Yes, I know that all of you that actually know me think I can't get any more geeky, but that's just not true. Yesterday I passed the 70-536 exam, "Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Application Development Foundation". I r smart now.

Preparing and taking this was quite a bit different than taking my previous two certifications was, for two reasons. First, because the test is so new, there are no published study materials. No specialized certification books to help. But as it turns out, it didn't matter. Though, if you want to take the cert, I do recommend going here. It's just a bunch of links to the MSDN documentation on the topics of the test, but it should save you some time looking it up yourself. Second, no ADO.NET.

This last issue was one thing that made passing the other two much easier. One was the .NET 1.1 ASP.NET test, and the other was the 1.1 Windows Forms test. Close to 50% of both of those tests focused around ADO.NET, which is one of my stronger areas. That left only 50% to actually testing on the actual gui side of things as well as security, internationalization, COM interop, etc.

But, anyway, I passed. This means that I'm now...still an MCP. None of my three certs actually add up to anything, so I'll have to wait for one more test.

And, BTW, this test has been out for so little time that, as far as I know, there aren't even any brain dumps out there yet (I didn't look all that hard, though I bet some will be out pretty soon). I'm glad I can say that. It was just me, MSDN, and my coworker David (who also passed). Cheating is for losers!

We may take the ASP.NET test soon as well. No published materials for that either. But apparently it's doable anyway...