Hi All, Looking for some advice around MCSD. I'm looking to try and get some formal qualifications for my team, and also try to round of their experience in areas that we don't touch on a daily basis. I've looked at the skills required to pass MCSD and they seem to cover a lot of what I'm looking for, and also, it's a Microsoft certification (we're a .NET house). The issue I've got is around the Training side of the certification. It doesn't look like it's required, and the exams are cheap. My question is, is there anyone out there with experience of using the Online training resources, and whether they are enough to pass? or is the recommendation to do some of the classroom courses? To give you an idea of the experience we have, our developers all have 3+ years of experience specifically in Web Development using Microsoft technologies. They are comfortable with the basics, and know the things they do on a daily basis very well. Something that came up after reviewing this, was that none of them have used, nor know indepth, what the html elements nav, section, etc. do, so it's really something that will help us round of their experience. Please don't rant about what developers should and shouldn't be able to do, the team is what it is, and I'm not changing them. Thanks in advance.

I wasn't saying it was a hotspot, just that it's poor use of code. It's actually nowhere near to being a hotspot (they have 1 particular click in the application that takes 15 minutes to load the page, and therefore only works when there is a decent internet connection and a high timeout set!). The object thing is FAR worse, however, in the context of how they've wrote the application it does make sense. That is actually one of the things I'm tackling at the moment. This is one of many issues I've found that they've put in (before I started reviewing the code), and I suspect that they will be doing less now. I also appreciate it can't be replaced by exactly what I've said based on the code sample, and in the application itself it would actually need to be different than you've suggested.

Just found this little gem in a live application that has been wrote (for us) and maintained by an outsourcing partner we use... paraphrased to make it easier to read.

string keyToFind = "asdfgsd44rtgr";

Dictionary dctTemp = GetDictionary();

object theObject = dctTemp.ToList().FirstOrDefault(x => x.key == keyToFind).Value;

This is in a live piece of code, and is run on every application login. As far as I'm aware, the compiler would not be able to optimise this to use dctTemp[keyToFind] and therefore would not be using a HashCode

I've got a couple of problems with the blog feed system, I'm not sure if it's me or not. When I go into manage my blog (there is only 1 blog I've go setup) there aren't any there, however, when I try to add it again, it says it already exists... Also, it's not polling, although this may be related to the above... UPDATE: not sure if it's relevant, but in the querystring parameters, there is no identifier, it's just "?=134235"... Thanks, Martin

I have the same issue... Java/Firefox SSL Certs -> Apache -> RTFM!!![^]

I'm currently getting excited about Mechwarrior Online (http://mwomercs.com).

Just got this e-mail from our director... and it made me giggle, so thought I'd share. It's a waste of my unlimited bandwidth broadband package to have received it (although sharing it is a perfectly legitimate use of it). If you think of the platform as an Ikea bookshelf (but better quality!), the one with boxes (Ikea sell 4 or 5 different designs of box that fit into the generic bookshelf). Normally you will select one of the standard Ikea boxes, but you could also build your own (or we could build it for you). The XXX platform framework is the bookshelf itself. The boxes that fit in the framework are functional modules with defined interfaces (or dimensions in the analogy). What you make your box look like or what you put in the box is completely up to you. You could put a computer in the box, or fill it with water! When we design our boxes, we should try and make them as functionally rich as we can, so most people will never have the desire to create a new one. Ultimately we want 10,000 clients to pay to use our framework, rather than 10 clients with high customisation requirements. The former is much more scalable. Hope this helps guide you in the right direction. Hilarious! Note omissions made to protect the company's identity.