MCAD Out of date?

Sheppy

Hey Guys,

This is my first post here, my name is Harry, Im 17 with fair experience in PHP, MySQL, and little in VB, C# and ASP.NET 2.0

Basically, my question is, if I take the MCAD exams (I will be doing developing web applications with Visual C# i think its exam 70-315), will they be about .NET Framework 2.0 and ASP.NET 2.0? I have looked at the books available, and they are all written in 2003 It seems to me that I will be studying for something which is now out of date and I wont ever use in the future

Maybe someone can point me in the right direction with this? I wouldn't mind taking the application development route, I enjoy that too, just all my past experiance is with web developing, especially in PHP...

Thanks in advance

Sheppy

JDMurray

What the differences are between the MCAD/MCSD/MCTS/MCPD is one of the most common questions in this forums. I guess that I really should make a sticky posting about it.

Basically, the MCAD and MCSD exams and certifications are for the .NET 1.x Framework used by Visual Studio 2003. The .NET 2.x Framework was introduced two years ago by Visual Studio 2005, and the MCTS and MCPD certifications were created specifically for .NET 2.x technology. The technologies added by the new .NET 3.x Framework will likely be added to the MCTS and MCPD exams in the future.

The common advice is if you will be working in .NET 1.x for an extended period of time (usually due to maintaining legacy .NET code at your job), you might do best to look at getting the MCAD or MCSD certifications. However, if you are only interested in the .NET technology of the present (2.x) and future (3.x), you should look into the MCTS and MCPD certifications instead.

From what you have stated abotu .NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 2.0, you should have a look at the requirements for MCTS and MCPD exams.

Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS)
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/mcts/default.mspx

Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD)
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/mcpd/default.mspx