So, what certifications?

[Lucio]

Ok, so I'm settling into my new job, it's a mix of technical support (frontline & second line), product developement (bug logging/testing + design of new features) and a small chunk of project management in that often I'm making the decisions as to what the developers should focus their effort on.

My question is, are there any recomended qualifications that I could study for in my spare time to enhance my performance and ultimately, further my career? If it makes the difference, the application is a combination of a C# framework and a MySQL database.

The areas that interest me the most are parts of the overall design, being able to take client's requirements and turn them into features by working with the developers. It's preferable to actually beign a developer because I get to mix an understanding of how the systems should work, with understanding the finished product.

[TheAnimus]

Well I wouldn't recommend any qualifications, the main one people ask for is a degree in a suitable discipline.

I would recommend reading about it. C# is has a very modern community around it, it evolves at quite a pace, so normally those that think they improve their value with a certification are real bottom rungers.

Having an understanding of all the latest and greatest technologies, but been able to debate at interview why you'd use one or the other is a better thing to prepare for with your time.

So its a C# framework and MySQL is it a GUI app? How are you abstracting the data model, using nHibernate or anything similar? Why MySQL and not a *ehem* grown up database? Why do you even need a relational database rather than NoSQL style jobbie, or an object store? Why not just XML your model?

If its service how are you composing the aspects of it, are you using anything like Spring or MEF?

How do you manipulate your objects are you using any thing like the reactive extensions, why is linq and iEnumarable helpful, why are there some languages which don't have a yield return pattern................ etc.

Oh and read the Richter book (CLR via C#), read it twice....

Its experience demonstrated in similar to that (so those where my first thoughts based on your project), thats what most of the places I've been at care about, I've only industry awards, no paid certifications, and a list of all but one happy punters, and that one was a "creative difference of opinions" by which I mean he was under the premise he knew what he was doing and I was under the opinion he was just a ****. Its also the hiring policy my current team has.

I was a so called senior dev after 18 months in the industry, so if you actually know your stuff, don't bull**** and deliver as promised, it doesn't take long and doesn't cost any real money besides a few books (ok they are £40 each....).

[Lucio]

Well, a degree is possible, but when you're looking at 6 years of study it's a bit of a pain to ask work to fund a share of it My employer has a scheme whereby they'll pay for relevant studies up front, and if you stay with them for 2 years after finishing it, you don't have to pay anything. If you leave during that period, you pay a diminishing % of the value of the course back.

Was looking to take advantage of it, that's all


The choice of MySQL database I suspect was down to familiarity for the lead developer, it's robust enough to survive a large deployment of a few hundred users, and well known enough to find support staff (like me !). The framework I believe was written around an MSAccess style database, given that all the examples reference Northwind dataset, so I'm happy that it's using MySQL

[finlay666]

How do you manipulate your objects are you using any thing like the reactive extensions, why is linq and iEnumarable helpful, why are there some languages which don't have a yield return pattern................ etc.

I would say a good breadth of knowledge is good.

I have been where I am for a year, being the only one with practical test development experience I have done a lot that hasn't been done internally, ok not all of it is that impressive but it's the breadth of knowledge that I find a huge advantage.

A few things that will probably be of use to have even a basic knowledge:

C# /.Net (MCTS exam books are a good way to learn parts, if they are willing to pay go for it IMO as it's good to demonstrate breadth of knowledge)

NUnit (for testing)/Selenium if it's web testing (the 2 go well together with some form of build management to automate some site testing)

Depending on the type of work: Winforms/WPF (fancy winforms)/Asp.Net (both webforms and mvc3, Wrox have a good book coming out soon)

Linq: Hugely useful, if using parallel processes

Mono: Not enough people know anything (I admit I'm in this group, trying to improve) - Directhex knows a lot about this

NHibernate : Could be of some use

APIS/WCF : useful if you do anything API based

Tool specific extras (for things like word/excel/VS oriented apps with the extensibility plugin)

Algorithms and writing efficient code: This will come with time

As said you would need the basics down properly, there are loads of examples and good books (I find Wrox quite good, some of the more technical ones especially) for doing self paced development and some great free tutorials and materials drop me a pm with any specific stuff you are looking at and I'll let you know what I know of from videos to free ebooks)

It's always best to just mess about with stuff and to not be afraid to ask. Actively learning new things is great and always helps when you are writing something and think "oh, I can use x instead of y as it provides more functionality with a lower cost"

I think I'm fortunate that I get to try so many new things at work, in the past couple of months I have written my own automated testing framework for UI testing, written a suite for testing an api, made a full MVC3 site for a high profile client, added a lot of additional functionality to our framework with logging and error handling and started to really improve the documentation process for projects and increasing code maintainability and quality.


A final thing to leave you with.... don't pick up bad habits where possible, start by doing everything the proper way (code formatting, commenting code etc), yes it's a faff on and yes it's boring but there are shortcuts to it in the IDE (ctrl K + D in VS to format a c# file) and it will come in useful when you need to go back to code to work on it or even for reference, it really grinds my gears when I go to do work on a legacy project and the code is poorly formatted, uses poor naming conventions and the only comments are bits of code commented out without any explanation as to why.