Mock Exam for 70-316 Passed (Finally!)

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 08:42:42 GMT

Good news people, I have finally passed the mock for 70-316. Although I am still not 100% confident on passing the thing for real, I am feeling a lot more confident each and every day.

The new job is really helping and paying dividends, I am no longer having to "translate" code in my mind when at work and at home. Sounds like no big deal, and I guess in many ways its not.. But it IS helping. I guess its like any language, be it code, vocal, written whatever, the more you use it, the better you get with it.

The mock did highlight some weak areas which I still need to work on:

Data Access
Seems I am still having problems, I think this is probably because I haven't done a great deal of DAL design and implementation at this stage. I am still getting caught by the odd red-herrings thrown into a question to throw you off (i.e. DataAdapter.Update or DataTable.Update).

Code Access Security
Keeps god damn getting me, and the annoying thing is, pretty much everyone I asked who I am in touch with in the dev world say they never use it! Grrrr!

Oh well, its all fun and games really =)

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Coursework Submitted!!

Sat, 21 Jul 2007 12:52:52 GMT

At last! I have finally completed (feedback pending) the course material for my current module on my MCAD programming course with CT (Computeach). I could have finished this a LOT earlier, but I was a silly boy and took too much work home.
I have told myself off a-plenty, and won't be doing it again!

Hopefully get some feedback in a couple of days, and get cracking on the next module (Windows Applications).

Things learned from this module:

Object-Orientated (OO) Programming

OO is very powerful, but also very good at sometimes making people (me) add complexity to a project when its not required. Its very easy to fall into the trap of producing objects for everything, when in certain scenarios, a couple of Arrays may have done the trick, without being overly difficult to digest.

Less is More

Sometimes you can have so much code staring back at you, which sounds productive, but its just bloody confusing. Decomposition and simplification and cut out code bloat a lot.

Always Read the Specification - Always!

Only stop when actually coding a section. It can be easy to gold-plate code. And while its great doing so, an all-singing-all-dancing project is no good to anyone when its 6 months late and your out of a job =)

Read Between the Lines

REALLY read the spec. Don't just take the "it must do this". Think about what is mustn't do. What does the specification implicitly say?

In Summary...

TBH, I actually already knew the above. But as we all know, what you know and what you practice can sometimes be very different things. And in order to learn we need to get our fingers burnt and make a few mistakes. So long as you learn from them, all is good!

I can imagine a lot of programmer's sat there shaking their head at this, but hey, you were naive once!

I'm happy!

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The Ramblings of Rob Cooper: Training & Development