/looks back at the date of the last entry...

Wow, has it really been that long? /sheepish grin

Things have kind of gotten away from me the past 10 months, with married life being a tad more hectic than I thought, and moving not once, but TWICE in these last 10 months. Been a fun year! :P In any case, Im back!

A few months back I was taking stock of my life as a programmer (this is in addition to this post), and with almost 4 years of experience up my sleeve (once upon a time that would have seemed gargantuan to me, oh how little I knew!), I realized just how limited my exposure was to some forms of the .NET technology stack. While I do know the business side of my job quite well, and certainly understand quite well the technologies our client currently uses, it came to me that we are still using .NET 2.0 (or earlier in some cases!) for most of our main applications.

Thats right folks, with my 4 years of 'experience' the total sum of the foundation of my knowledge is a technology released in 2005!

It was at this point I came to the realization that I really, really need to do something about this! Ive realized that it is quite important as a developer to know when you are lagging behind the pack, or when your skill-set isnt _quite _what it could be, and pull your finger out and do something about it. And you know what they say... better late than never! :)

So Ive decided to study for my Microsoft Certification, specifically (at the moment); .NET Framework 4, Web Applications. My long term goal being having enough MCTS (Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist) qualifications to sit the exam for my Microsoft Certified Professional Developer qualification. I figure that the certification using the latest .NET version will even out some of the rough edges in my lack of experience with other areas, with things like WCF/PF, MVC etc. Im going to start out at 1 hour a night, and once I hit the meatier stuff maybe a bit more, and then do a recap every sunday with what Ive learnt/gone through in... you guessed it! A blog post! :D

Im hoping to get through about a chapter a week (although it wouldnt surprise me if it took longer as I get further along), and sit my exam in a few months. Hopefully the blog entries I do are informative  and give a clear sense of understanding about the MCTS qualifications and what they entail, and even help other people out there learning the technologies Im studying...

Have a good night everyone :)