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| fmusick 2002-05-24, 2:38 pm |
| I just passed Desktop with an 842. Geez was I nervous. I'll have to agree with an early poster "MCSD In A Nutshell" is the way to go. By the time I was done with the Exam Cram books, they had me expecting operator precedence questions.  | |
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| Congratulations...
Well Done !!!!!!!!! | |
| cross36 2002-05-27, 3:25 pm |
| Nice score, congrads! | |
| mikeghet 2002-06-05, 1:52 am |
| Good Job man! | |
| fmusick 2002-06-05, 2:14 am |
| I just wanted to say thank you. It feels good to be congratulated.
I hope to hear it again soon for attaining an MCSD.  | |
| NetChild1985 2002-06-05, 6:43 am |
| Congrats on your pass! | |
| RichardJW 2002-06-24, 8:06 pm |
| Wonderful dude!! I mean congrats and all that. Who will care that you have an MCSD? How many years of programming experience have you got? | |
| sweta 2002-06-24, 11:21 pm |
| Congrats...
i am preparing for VB desktop 6.0, can you help with any info on this...
Thanks | |
| fmusick 2002-06-25, 12:25 am |
| Nail down what you excel at. In my case, I had started out with VBA and VBScript so I didn't spend too much time working about programming for the web. I would note the following:
1. There may be quite a few database questions. I had a bunch. Don't worry too much about RDO and DAO. In practice, I only use them if I absolutely have to. ADO is simpler.
2. Read up on recursive error trapping. Those where does the error get caught questions.
3. Know the "new" stuff. I may have an advantage here. I still have VB 5 so when the books I was reading mentioned things like the DataEnvironment I paid close attention.
4. In my case they assumed you were a programmer. The basic language stuff didn't really get covered. I don't remember at this point what was on practice and what was on the real thing. I think the exam did pull a Mod question. I always forget Fix vs. Int anyway so I drilled that into my head.
5. Beat the crap out of VB. I can't guess your experience level but if you think its a little low, build stuff. Throw something together with the standard controls. The more experience you have, the easier it is to spot fake methods and properties.
That's about it. One last quick note on terminology. ActiveX and COM are the same thing. | |
| fmusick 2002-06-25, 12:43 am |
| quote:
Originally posted by RichardJW
Wonderful dude!! I mean congrats and all that. Who will care that you have an MCSD? How many years of programming experience have you got?
I'll care. MCSD sounds so much better than MCP (I have Tron flashbacks every time I see the letters MCP).
I have about 2 years of full-scale development. Started out on the lighter side in VBA and ASP. Ran into something that couldn't be done through scripting and I was off. Nothing enterprise level yet. Mostly stand-alones and client-server work.
Why do you ask? | |
| RichardJW 2002-06-25, 6:07 am |
| quote:
I have about 2 years of full-scale development. Started out on the lighter side in VBA and ASP. Ran into something that couldn't be done through scripting and I was off. Nothing enterprise level yet. Mostly stand-alones and client-server work.
In work or out of work? Let me just make the point that I'm reasonably good at VC++ and I too have written several (minor) applications with it. However, unless I can demonstrate a decent commercial experience with it - which I can't, then noone is going to employ me as a VC++ programmer. The best I can hope for is a mix of VB and VC++. | |
| fmusick 2002-06-25, 11:36 am |
| Working (although I'm just coming off a 7 month consulting/unemployed run). I'm more of a resident techie than a programmer at this point but that was actually what I was looking for: the opportunity to wear as many hats as possible.
I got lucky. As a consultant, I built a parsing engine for the company I now work for. I haven't heard many people make references to consulting agencies on these boards but they can keep you alive while you send out resumes and its one way to gain experience. I don't know if they have offices in the UK but I owe RHI a lot.
C++ may be a more difficult market simply because of the years some can bring to the table. VB wasn't really being used to a large extent until VB6 (to my knowledge) and it's impossible to have more than 1 year of experience with .NET (although it's funny to see ads asking for 3 ). | |
| RichardJW 2002-06-25, 12:11 pm |
| I've also noticed that the majority of jobs asking for .NET are high or very high paying - there seems to be the assumption that programming with .NET has somehow not been brought down to the masses. There simply has not been time since the beta releases of .NET and the release for people to gain huge experience with .NET - I mean I've been dabbling but I've got all the time in the world to do this because I am not presently employed. Would this qualify as experience with .NET in the eyes of the employer? Doubtful - though I've put in quite a few hours at it. | |
| fmusick 2002-06-25, 1:45 pm |
| I haven't messed with it as much as I would like. I never picked up the release, just the beta. I don't think potential employers count anything that doesn't appear in a resume job description. You can bring it up during the interview but that of course means getting that far.
I think the high pay for .NET developers is actually a continuation. There were people building on the betas and the alphas (Microsoft liked to advertise this  ). Those people will cost corporations plenty. The other thing I saw listed a lot was .NET experience mixed with about 10 years experience in older technologies. It will stabilize as it becomes more widespread. Right now, I think dot coms are the primary employers asking for .NET experience. They have notoriously paid well. |
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