I'm certifiable, apparently

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 10 October 2006 22:33:46

Today has been a busy, as per usual. However I had a small and pleasant surprise when I started to investigate the Microsoft certified professional courses that are available. After all, I have no qualifications whatsoever in web development (or indeed in anything even remotely technical) so I thought I'd try to get at least one certificate to hang on the wall. A helpful friend sent me this link to a sample Microsoft exam for the MCWD (Microsoft Certified Web Developer) qualification, which I think would be a good one for me.

I didn't have high hopes, even though only 75 percent is needed to pass, because frankly I'm still learning this asp.net thing and wouldn't consider myself a guru by any means. Still, armed with precisely no research or revision, I bravely had a go. And I got 80 percent. That's right, 24 out of 30 if my matchs is correct.

So, either the exam is easy (possible) or I am a genius (unlikely). It's funny that the questions that tripped me up were the ones where I tried to pick the 'clever' answer, but it turned out to be the simpler answer that was correct. I'll learn that for next time. Plus a couple of the questions on web accessibility were, to be honest, well behind the times.

Still, I was glad to see that the exam ranged from accessibility to SQL usage, via internationalisation, personalisation, Javascript and more. So it looks like I'll be booking the real exam sometime soon. And, with any luck, I'll have a proper qualification after all.