I passed!
Last Friday I took the MCTS 70-528 Microsoft Certification exam. It was a little rough in places, but overall a good experience. And I'm one exam closer to completing the first half of my current certification goal. My intent is to achieve MCPD status for enterprise application development in .NET 2.0.
The focus of exam 70-528 is developing web-based client applications using the .NET Framework 2.0. The main user interface for web clients in 2.0 being ASP.NET applications, this exam was all about the aspx goodness. There was of course some IIS tidbits thrown in along the way, but nothing too difficult.
I'm always suprised with the complexity that Microsoft is able to cram into a multiple-choice question! If you've taken a Microsoft cert before, you know exactly what I'm talking about. They always manage to turn a simple concept into a head-spinner. One of the tips I was given back in school was to always trust your first instinct on the correct answer, because most of the time it is the right one. This concept does make it easier to spend a little more time on each question, because you don't need much time to review answers before marking it as completed.
Once I have completed the two remaining exams for the MCPD certification, I'll get started on the .NET 3.5 stuff (where the real fun stuff is). I've been wanting to dedicate some serious time to getting up to speed with WPF, WCF, WF and Silverlight. And I love the fact that ASP.NET now has MVC project templates and support in VS. The sooner I can get around to diving into this stuff, the better!
