Preparing for 70-536 by building a small application

[dotNET]

Hi

I find it hard to learn by passive reading. So I've decided to prepare for the 70-536 by building a C# application and incorporating the 70-536 curriculum in it as much as possible.

eg. creating customers, storing them in an Arraylist. Sorting the arraylist..saving to a filestream, reading the file etc.

I've found this is forcing me to really think about what Im doing and the compiler is great for making me consider why u can and cant do things a certain way. I really feel as if I'm learning. It's taking me a bit of time this way. Do you think it's a bad idea preparing this way (with the sheer volume of stuff to go through)? I do realise that I'll have to learn stuff from the book as well and do pratice questions. I just see no point in being able to memorise all the curriculum without being able to put it into practice in a real world setting.

Anyone else tackle it this way?

[Fergal1982]

whatever works for you. If you find that this method helps you retain the knowledge, and understand it better, then its a good method for you. It makes no odds whether it works for other people or not. Studying for these exams should take as long as it takes for these concepts to be retained in your memory (and understood). You can use another (faster) method of study, but at the end of the day if you arent understanding things, then you arent going to pass. Or even if you do, you wont actually understand the information (its one thing to be able to regurgitate information, but you have to be able to understand it too).

[dmarsh26]

Its an excellent approach and its also the approach most programming courses and the training kit reccomends. Programming is an activity, like playing a sport or a musical instrument, you can't learn everything just by reading.

You might consider creating lots of little programs rather than one big one, this should more effectively enable you to focus on whats going on. Just as athletes and musicians have little work outs or warm ups.

A program that covers all of the 536 would probably be a little artificial anyway as most programs would not need all the different features of the framework.

Most people learn most by doing, people that appear to learn best from books have either had previous practical experience or they are good at imagining things and putting them into context. They play with the concepts in their mind.

I hear...I forget
I see...and I remember
I do...and I understand
Ancient Chinese Proverb

There are many learning and memorisation techniques, but yes they aren't always the same thing ! The details of the syntax of the language are important but they are not really tested for, the library knowledge can be looked up in real life so its probably more important to grasp the concepts than the details of the library. Unfortunately the cert largely tests memorisation of the framework, so you will need both to pass the test and be a good programmer.

[glosrob]

I find I learn better but varying how I learn - sometimes I read, sometimes I read outloud, sometimes I read and make notes. This time round for my last exam I actually made audio notes and listened to them on my way to work every morning for about 3 months on my iPod

Like has been said it is whatever works for you.

I had little applications for each chapter that I would make that specifically used the learning objectives. Nothing too fancy or I felt it was time lost. So for collections: try making a small console app to store a list of names and then adding the ability to sort them ascending, descending etc. For security create a series of methods with different security requirements and then run the app calling the methods to see how they react in different situations. And so on...

Practical experience is very important I think.

[Mathematix]

I just buckle down and get on with it. In the real world of software development that's exactly what you'll be expected to do.

Stop worrying!