Studying for MCAD - It's not upgrading your skills from vb6 - It's a career change!

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BarryGSumpter

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Just gotta get this off my chest.
So please don't flame me. I'm looking for some encouragement.

IT professional since 1984
VB developer since 1992
Change of profession in 92 to PC development.

MCAD - Microsoft Certified Application Developer

I've attempted to start studying vb.net about 8 times and have finally force myself to stick with it by investing in a self study course ware.

After 20 hours of course study and an additinal 40+ hours of self imposed "lab work", I've come to realize that there is only one thing that has changed from vb6 to vb.net.

Everything.
And I mean every-freakin-thing.

It's my opinion that when you're deciding which study path to take and it reads "windows developer path" or "web developer path", its misleading.

It's my opinion that you would be better off not having any programming experience at all. But, have just a multi-tiered general understanding before studying vb.net.

Again, the difference is so complete that I am now considering this a career change and NOT a skill upgrade.

The MCAD study is so intricate that it discusses a function calls which have up to 4 parameters, each parameter has 3 or 4 possible values. The course then tests me on that section on how to use that function in a certain manner. For me, there is just no way to know the answer. I can re-take the test but of couse you know the answer since the questions don't change. Just the order in which the questions are presented.

I can retake the test a few weeks later and pass only becase I remember the answers. Not because I understand the questions and am confident I know the answer. Sometimes I just guess all the way thru just to see the outcome and can actually pass just on a lucky fluke.

As I write my babble I can see I've lost my enthusiasm.

I had intended this as just a brain dump to releave some stress and not to ask for help or even actually post.

But perhaps I should.

So, any positive motivational suggestions or material directly related to studying Microsoft Certification would be greatly appreciated.

Any study material with 90% hands-on lab work would also be greatly appreciated.

There was a book of "The Visual Guide to Visual Basic" that I absolutley loved. And would like to see in a vb.net version.

I've got all the study material I need so I don't need another 800 page $150 book to use on my desk as a paper weight. ;) Thanks anyway.

All the Best and looking forward to a better year,
baz
 
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Heh. This leads me to beleive that getting MCAD isn't as great as I thought it would be (no offense, but same questions?).

So, any positive motivational suggestions or material directly related to studying Microsoft Certification would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
DOH. What I wrote above was not positive.

Yeah, it was a big change from VB6 to VB.NET, personally - I loved it. OOP was just the way my mind worked.

Postive Thoughts:
Life sucks, get used to it.

No just kidding man :).

Positive Thoughts:
Some have a harder time with change than others. If there's anything you don't understand or need assistance on, we at XtremeDotNetTalk can help you, welcome to the forums.

-The Pentium Guy
 
Thanks for the reply, dude.

I just don't believe in the Certifications. At All. Never have.
I'm just so freakin desperate for work that I got caught up in a salesmans pitch that I could get qualified in 60 days.
The price was 1/4 the retail. Retail being the price of a new car.
And I'd have access "forever".
And a refund for the test if failed if taken within 60 of start of couse study.

Although the salesman was quite corrent saying "The certification will get you the interview. You have to get the job." Which is fair enough.

The online chat mentors are very attentive and professional.

"OOP was just the way my mind worked." Cool. Sounds like a C++ developer to me and sound like C# would be easy for you as well. The certification study goes far far deeper than oop. I've seen a short course on vb.net oop set and get and properties and such. Don't know what happened to the let but if its gone then good ridence. oop in vb.net (from the shortcourse) seemed almost too easy.

"Life sucks." - Yeah, isn't the humar race just a bunch of uncareing pesimistic prats. :p Even when you ask for positive reponses you get the "Get a life, Cry Baby!" So putting on my U.P.P. hat, I'll say "FU2". :D Now, hat off.

"Some have a harder time with change than others." - I wish, I've always had to study hard cause nothing has ever come naturally, for me. I've always enjoyed learning new things and was really looking forward to it. But this course is so intricate its almost impossible to learn from. i.e. understand and retain. Not just pass a test then forget it.

"If there's anything you don't understand or need assistance on, we at XtremeDotNetTalk can help you, welcome to the forums."

Acknowledged and thanks.

baz
 
I think the best way to learn is not from books and courses. I find it much easier to do hands-on and do everything on my own, and use the books as a reference.
For example, I'm taking a Java course this semester (I'm a sophomore in high school), and I've already flipped through the book and I understand pretty much 99.99% of it, the reason being that it is VERY similar to C#.

Whoops, I went off topic a bit there - but my point is, if the course method doesn't work for you, try the hands-on approach. Works great for me. I'm not saying "Quit the course", but maybe try to do some more things on your own that pertain to the course. I find it much easier to type the code out in a book and understand it rather than reading the book itself (the reason bieng that I am not a compiler, just to let you know [ok bad joke]).

I'm not sure if you do this, but try typing the code you learn in the course manually. Then mess around with the code and see exactly what does what, making sure you don't just say "Oh this is supposed to do that", not fully understanding what the point of it is. So be sure you understand why they use the code instead of what they use. The best way to do that is to go back and try to find another approach to do the same thing. Should you might fail, you'll realize why the book does things the way they do it. Should your alternate approach work, see if it's better optimized/cleaner/flows better than your code, then ... (don't do this but...) tell the prof that the book sucks and tell him you're smarter than the book :P.

And as a last resort, you're (again) always welcome on our forums. We have a great number of experts from all over the world gathered in this community.

-The Pentium Guy
 
First things first...
VB.NET is a lot harder to use than previous versions of VB, especially in the beginning. Two things jump to mind:
1. You have to save files before you can even run your first project - in VB6, you could just start a new project, change code and run without ever saving.
2. You don't really have any "built in" functions - everything you had "built in" with VB6 is now part of the .NET framework.

If I had to start over again, I'd start by reading a copy of Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code. It gives you a sense of freedom to code how you want now (procedurally) and later change the code to OOP. Obviously, if you know OOP inside and out now, you'd start that way. But if you're like most of us, you learned procedural programming and a jump to "everything is a class" is a bit harder to grasp. It will come easier, I promise.

If you haven't already, I would definitely spend some time just learning the language - Console Apps. Avoid windows apps for awhile as they will taint what you do. For example, a Form is nothing more than a Class that inherits from a System.Windows.Form class, which provides automatic drawing and other stuff. When you look at the code, a lot is done for you - and maybe not the way you'd expect.

As for certification... I think it's a good thing, but only in a small way. I know of no company that would hire solely on that, or that would NOT hire because you weren't certified. I'd think of certification as a self-imposed, structured, testable, way to show YOURSELF that you know .NET.

As for Windows or Web...
As I mentioned, I'd learn the language first. Learn classes, events, properties, loops, etc. Then pick up the .net framework - classes that are provided to you. Then you can start learning Windows programming or Web, if you prefer. There is a definite difference and a definite destinction. Windows is "easier" since you don't need to setup IIS or other webserver to test anything. At my company, a developer usually hires for a "windows" or "web" position so if you want to concentrate on Windows, do that.

Most of all, have fun! Go back "to school" and write a few dummy apps. Can you print 5 rows of asterics to the console? Can you play a "high/low" game? Can you make a mock store that offers 3 choices and adds up the totals? After you write a small app, try to enhance it - how could you make a new class out of something? How could you use an event to let some other code know when something happens? The idea is to think of what you might want the program to do and see if you know how to do it. Try and think of the idea first, then how to implement it - you'll find tougher problems that way.

The End.
 
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