
If you haven’t read the KnightKnetwork for long (or ever before) you may not know that I’m a programmer. I work primarily in a heavily macroed assembler that NO ONE else in the world still uses (or I doubt they do anyway).
I’m a big fan of The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Andrew Hunt and Dave Thomas, and one of the suggestions they make is to learn a new programming language every year. So, to do this, I’ve dabbled in Python and PHP but lacking a clear goal, I usually stopped learning as soon as I completed whatever personal project I was working on and got busy with other things. If I want to take on some side projects or more complicated personal ones, then I need more than that and more than my regular assembler so I’ve decided to get some MS Certifications, specifcally the new ASP 3.5 ones. I’m not sure how many and which paths I’ll go down, but this post will serve as a way to mark the path I do take. These certifications provide set goals and should force me to a more comprehensive knowledge of the technology than I’ve been achieving.
I’ll bookmark useful sites, provide book links to Amazon (affiliate links) of anything I purchase, and post any useful tips I come up with along the way.
General Books And Tools:
- Book: Beginning ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB (Programmer to Programmer)
- Site: Microsoft Learning – Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Certification
- Exam Discounts: MS First to Know
Exam 70-536: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Application Development Foundation
- Core exam required for all the others
- MS Learning Site for Exam 70-536
- Book: MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-536): Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Application Development Foundation