Today I passed this test: .NET Framework - Application Development Foundation, after studying (not so diligently) for a couple months.
The only book available for study is this massive 1088 page official Microsoft book.
This book has a lot to be desired. Even at this massive size, it is still too brief on a lot of topics listed in here. Some are not even covered! One thing that contributed to the size is the redunduncy of code in both 'VB and //C#.
The CD that comes with the book is good, it comes with sample test questions and the entire book in PDF.
It is very hard to find sample questions on the web. All you see is "buy this sample questions for $99". Come on.
Fortunately I did find some PDF files containing sample questions and many of the questions on my test come directly off those!
The test is mostly about whether you can tell which method is real and which is fake and lots of nuts and bolts that are easily found on MSDN or google.
There are still many things I have not seen or heard on the actual test. I am just lucky to guess correctly.
So to study, first spend a few weeks with the big book cover to cover!
I am sure everyone will be disgusted with ugly topics of those encryption and hashing algorithms, and dealing with Window Services. Look, people just don't that much of that in real life. There are also COM objects to work with and multi-culture/region so they write currency differently. There are massive amount of information on security stuff. Come on, people don't do that kind of stuff much! Most people write Web and desktop applications.
After you have done with the book, play with the practice test on the CD.
Then revisit the objectives. First start with a list of topics with MSDN links, such as here. Soon you will find out MSDN is a mess and can't even convey ideas in sample codes.
Go ahead, go online to try to find sample questions. You may land on something from TestKing or ActualTest... The exam I saw has many of the questions right from those!
Problem with these PDFs: these are locked, read-only! It is hard to copy and paste just the questions and separate the answers. Fortunately I was able to unlock them using some 3rd party tool, copy-paste it onto text file, and write my own little code cranker to turn it into HTML where I can click on links to check my answers.
Programming certification is testing your short term memory on cramming API information. It doesn't measure programming skills, though I earned another line on my resume (that nobody really cares about)
Why does my company doubt my ability and make me take this test?
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