Exam passed: “MCTS - Windows Applications Development with Microsoft .NET Framework 4”

I am definitely not a guru of WPF but recently in my company I had to play with it a little bit and it was the right opportunity to prepare the certification.

The 15th of August 2011 I passed the certification exam:
“MCTS - Windows Applications Development with Microsoft .NET Framework 4”.

This is how looks my certification logo at the moment:

For many people certifications are not important or required. However, I believe that setting goals and achieve them is very exciting. If you studied at the university like me, you know what means passing an exam. Well, that kind of emotion allow you to continue towards higher goals.
This time I want to achieve the professial level MCPD.

Before this, I have to pass other two MCTS level certifications:

• MCTS: .NET Framework 4, Data Access
• MCTS: .NET Framework 4, Service Communication Applications

Let's start :)

Before to finish, I want to underline some important aspects when you want to prepare a Microsoft certification:

1. Don't use only the official preparation book because it contains a subset of the required arguments.
2. Read carefully the section "Skills Measured" and check that you covered all the subjects
1. In this case, for example, it was easy to unnote that the exam included the Task Parallel Library and Parallel LINQ
3. Take practise tests on MeasureUp is a big help and you shouldn't understimate this

One thing that I liked is that, comparing to the last time I did an exam (two years ago), the complexity was higher. Questions were less trivial that asking what is the name of a certain method (useless questions). Questions were about concepts in order to test your deep knowledge of certain subjects. It seems clear the work that Microsoft is doing to make certifications more valuable.