Code Monkey want MCTS, Code Monkey take exam

One problem I have always had with certain certifications is with how
broad they are.

For instance, after getting my first VB6 cert ("MCP"), I wanted
something that showed my boss that I understood how to pull from a
database in VB6: so, ADO 2.x (not to be confused with ADO.NET 2.0).

However I could not get a cert in just ADO. I had to get a
"distributed programming" cert which was "distributed" over MTS
(already, in 2001, phased out in favour of COM+) and ASP (about to be
phased out and a poor programming model besides).

So, I ended up cramming a lot of nonsense just to prove that I had
the ADO. Go ahead, ask me now what the hell ".TransactionContext"
means. All you other old VB6/SQL developers - how much MTS crap do
*you* remember? did you ever use?

I didn't "cheat" to get my 70-175 but, except for ADO, I may as well
have. If you also got a 70-175, then I went wee wee in your pool.
Sorry.

>From what I have seen of the 70-536 book, the exam has at least (and
at last) separated the basic framework from the specialists in VB and
C#.

But even here there seems to be a division between the high-trust-
environment / barely-trusted-programmer and the low-trust-
environment / highly-trusted-programmer topics. Based on the book,
70-536 seems to be a cert for server programmers, what with their
multithreading and flatfile streams and app domains.

I am defining a junior programmer as someone who works in high-trust
environments, like entering basic data or else providing a UI to a
secured-by-someone-else business tier. An intermediate would be
comfortable coding in low-trust environments.

A junior should know:

1. Framework Fundamentals
4. Collections and Generics
9. Installing and Configuring Applications
10. Instrumentation [maybe not to the Event Log; although, if there is
a way to restrict certain parts of it from the main Applications etc
logs, then I'll bite]
12. User and Data Security
14. Reflection [for calling up XL etc]

And should be allowed to choose from among the following:

2. [Flatfile] I/O
3. Searching, Modifying, and Encoding Text [regular expressions
mostly]
5. Serialization
6. Graphics
15. Mail
**. ADO

These are interface questions, and are not going to be used in all
environments. Personally I've done a lot of ADO, with some I/O; and I
have seen some demand for Serialization. But I never deal with Regex,
and hardly ever with Graphics; and Mail is just too easy to deserve a
place in certification.

VB6 cert either didn't cover, or I never needed, the following:

7. Threading [are you really going to be letting your juniors play
lightsabre-duel with threads? let's give them a Mutex and let them
duke it out over your whole server! no thanks]
8. Application Domains and [especially] Services
11. Application Security [unnecessary for the responsibilities Code
Monkey is likely to be given]
13. Interoperation [see #11 - plus, the best of the old API calls are
now bundled into .NET]
16. Globalization [that SilkRoad.exe *might* be translated into Old
Sogdian one day... but then again, it might not]

Wanted: a restoration of the MCP cert with some choice as to how to
provide a business-to-business interface: ADO, I/O, XML etc etc. This
is for monkeys like I am now.

MCTS, then, can cover the low-trust server coding; en route to
distributed and ASP.NET programming which is where the money is. This
is for higher primates like I hope to evolve to.

[apologies to Jon Coulton for the topic header]

Zimri