Couple of C# questions.

[timmymayes]

I have a friend working for a bank programming, he doesn't do C# but some other lower level stuff as a contract worker and he informed me that recently they hired two new programmers that had no prior exp/knowledge other than C# certification. We talk programming all the time as I was in college for a few years with that major. I'm 23 and never finished but got up to a few 300 level courses which I passed without any problems. Now I am going to go for the C# certification and try and get it as fast as possible. I am planning on spending roughly 30-40 hours a week, minimum, on the learning/training. I have a few resources available already and do not wish to take a course due to monetary constraints and I'm just more suited to self learning, I slept through most of those programming courses in college.

Here is a list of resources:
About 75 training videos from learnvisualstudios.net as well as their .net framework videos.

I'm also a big fan of O'rielly and have the following books:
.net and xml
.net framework essentials
.net windows forms in a nutshell,
C# in a nutshell
C# cook book
C# language reference
C# & vb.net pocket reference
Learning C#
Programing C#

I had a recent birthday and asked only for barnes and noble gift cards

Well I have a few more and I am wondering what other books are recommended in order to pass the C# cert test as well as some any good resources for sample/practice tests.

This will be my first certification so any other general advice on it would be nice too.

My goal is to get the cert in the next month or two. I don't have any C# specific experience but I have C, Python, and Java experience two which I learned abit in college.

I know the material is not above me. I also know I'm a bit ambitious to try and get these certs so fast but I have all the time in the world as I am layed off and I have the drive. If steve can get 2 Degrees in 3 semesters I feel I can get one cert in a month or two.

Any ideas or comments would be much appreciated.

Cheers,
Timothy

[Scientist]

I imagine that there is a book which covers everything that will be on the C# exam, so you may want to get that so you will know what areas you will need to learn. There may also be sample tests online, which also would be a good way to see what the test will be like.

Other than that, if you don't already have one, you'll definitely want to pick up a C# compiler so you can write programs as practice. If you don't want to buy Visual Studio .NET 2005, you can download the .NET SDK from Microsoft. You'll have to write your code in a plain text editor, but it won't cost you anything. Though, the exam might cover some version of Visual Studio .NET, so you might end up needing it.

You could also try Visual C# Express, which I believe is free, but may differ or lack important features from Visual Studio .NET so that using it could hurt you on an exam.

Coming from a C++ background, I found C# fairly easy to pick up. However, there are subtle differences that will trip you up if you assume language elements of C# are just like they are in C++. For example, with switch statements in C#, you have to explicitly declare it if you want one case to fall through to another, whereas in C++, you have to explicitly declare if you don't want the case to fall through to the next one.

[Dimitry]

As far as I could tell, there arent' that many differences between Express and Standard editions of .NET 2.0 frameworks from MS, at least from the Object Model perspective. I think it's the actual IDE that's different, but on most exams, they probably test you on the language itself, not the IDE (just my opinion though, might want to verify for sure if you decide to go this route).

[timmymayes]

I forgot to mention I downloaded the visucal C# express edition to work with. And I may get a compiler too I already have Xemacs for windows as I prefer plain text editing for most programming I do.

Thanks for the input and I can't wait for the rest (intenting it ;p)\

Cheers,
Timothy