How I passed certification at Xamarin University
Hi, Habr! We occasionally talk about development on Xamarin, and even created a column #xamarincolumn for those interested. Today it is time for stories (more precisely, one story). Under the cat, you will learn about studying at Xamarin University and passing the certification exam first-hand.
I give the floor to Sasha Alekseev (he's notorious in the Japer7 Xamarin community).
On August 12, 2017, I passed the Xamarin certification exam, received my cherished certificate and now I will tell you more about this process.
')
Let's start with the fact that I have C # 5 programming experience and Xamarin 2+ years, so I managed to go through everything pretty quickly.
I registered on the Xamarin University portal from the moment trial access appeared. The trial includes attending several initial lectures (2 or 3) to get an idea of ​​how the online classes are held at Xamarin University.
Classes are of 2 types:
It was introduced not so long ago and currently 18 lessons are worked out and available.
Plus self-study is that it is available for free and at any time. Each lesson in itself contains several sections, a video with the theory, practical tasks, blitz polls. After completion, a tick is placed in the office that the topic is passed.
There is more to honesty. Of course, you can click on all sections and pass a blitz survey with 2 or 3 attempts, but this will not help you pass the certification exam, and it will not add to your knowledge.
The most important thing is to complete all the available lectures for self-study, then this is 50% of the way to obtain a certificate.
They take place in the form of an online lecture with a presentation where a live teacher tells the theory, after a piece of theory a practical task is performed.
At the beginning of the lecture, the teacher always reminds you that on the lesson page you need to download an archive with materials containing:
Everything is convenient, but there are typos and inaccuracies in the manuals, which was 3 times in my experience, we wrote to the teacher and he brought these errors to correct. It's amazing how after so many streams of students could stay there.
Also, the teacher sometimes conducts blitz polls on the theory, does not affect anything, but it is useful for checking the learned material.
And so, back to practice in the online lesson. She is of two kinds.
Self practice . Each performs the task itself, it is given from 5 to 25 minutes depending on the complexity. The teacher starts the timer and goes about his business, from time to time he, of course, comes back and asks if everything is clear and how progress is being made.
The task is very well described in steps in the manual, if problems arise, then the ready code is always hidden under the spoilers, which should work out after the step.
At the end of the assignment, the teacher is ready to prompt and explain if something does not work. Also in the chat can prompt other students, which sometimes also helps out.
Group practice . In group practice, the teacher does the task with everyone, for the same training manual, explaining and commenting on all his actions. It remains only to repeat after him and delve into the written code.
Plus the online lecture is that you can always ask the teacher a question in a chat or in a voice. At the end of the lesson the teacher answers the questions, until everyone disconnects from the class, if something remains unclear, then everyone will chew and explain.
A very important point, all materials and all online lectures in English, so to ask a question with your voice you need to have at least the minimum speaking skills. There are no materials in Russian, from the word "absolutely."
My conversational speech leaves much to be desired, so I communicated exclusively through chat, but sometimes even the teacher’s speech was incomprehensible to me, so I read the documentation and dealt with the code in detail.
A certification track is available in your account - classes that you must complete in order to get admission to a certification exam. It is better to pass lessons in ascending order of numbers, for the best understanding.
In addition to the certification track, there are many other interesting lectures on C #, F #, Azure, Enterprise, and UWP testing. Some lectures are very rare 1-2 times a month, so it is better to take a seat on them in advance.
Since Xamarin is an American company and they are based in the USA, some online lectures are not held at very convenient times, for example, midnight, 3 am and even 4. There are also afternoon lectures and there are enough of them, but when you need a lesson at 4 one o'clock in the morning, and the next time it will be held only after 2 weeks, then you have to get up so as not to spend waiting for the only lesson.
By the way, at Xamarin University there is an opportunity to request a lecture at a special time, but I did not have to use it.
Occupation is held in any case, even if there is 1 person. At the lecture on asynchronous programming C # I was 1 on 1 with the teacher, it turned out to be a more personalized lesson and communication, he asked some questions and addressed me directly, it was very nice.
But this again, provided good English, unfortunately, I could not answer the teacher something coherent.
Online session with Xamarin expert 1 on 1, he can make a review of your code, suggest the architecture of the application or help with other problems. A total of 1 hour per month is given to communicate with an expert, and because of the language barrier, I did not take advantage of this opportunity.
Since I wanted to save on certification and pass it as quickly as possible, I took advantage of lectures for self-study.
Layfkhak to speed up the learning process watched videos on acceleration, enough speed 1.25x and 1.5x.
Having gone through all the self-study, only after that I signed up, for July 2017 it cost $ 83 a month. I went to the class calendar and planned 2-3 lectures a day.
I will say right away that one online lecture takes from 1.5 to 3 hours, so the day I spent a decent amount of time on training + after each lecture I worked on tasks that I did not have time to do or applications did not work correctly. As I wrote above, some lectures were held late at night or in the early morning.
As a result, in 2 weeks I managed to complete all the classes necessary for certification, and a little more from above, from personal interest in the topics.
After passing all the lectures, access to passing the certification test appears. But you need to carefully prepare for it, because it lasts 3 hours and contains 150 questions, you can skip questions and then go back to anyone and change the answer.
Before the test, I turned off the phones, went to the toilet, brought a cup of water, closed all the tabs in the browser, left only Google, Google translator and a page with Xamarin University. All this happened at night and on weekends, nobody was at home, so even the family did not distract me.
Yes, all this is necessary in order to save yourself a maximum of time and not be distracted from the test.
And time was very necessary, for example, to translate questions and answer choices that were not clear. Also on questions, where he doubted his answer, he used Google to make sure of the correct answer.
During the test, trouble happened, the more questions answered, the more the page with the test in Safari slowed down, and at one point the browser ended with an error. I even panicked a little, but at Xamarin University everything is thought out and you can return to the exam after closing the browser, all the answers remain, but time continues to tick.
Passing the test for the first time, I was sure that at the end I still had a cloud of time, but no matter how, after answering the last question there were 7 minutes left and a few more missed questions. Urgently answered the rest as he considered correct.
And here is my first result - 77% of correct answers, and the threshold of delivery is 80%, a bit offensive, but after the test I understood which topics I had the most difficulty with.
At the end of the test, a list of questions is issued in which he made mistakes, but neither the answer choices nor the option he chose are indicated. Taking all these questions, I drove them into Word and, as I found the answer, put it in this “work on the bugs”.
After such a failure, of course, I lectured on topics in which there were difficulties.
And so after 2 weeks, I returned to the test again, strange, but again stay up the night, that's how impatient I was to get tested at midnight)
Although there is a plus in this, the street is quite quiet, and you are as focused as possible. And so again armed with a translator and a cup of water, proceeded to the test. This time, on the last question, I still had 15 minutes left, an excellent result. Enough time to think carefully about the questions that were missed.
And here I press the treasured button of completion of the test and get the result of 87%. I did not expect from myself that I would raise my result by 10%!
A letter of congratulations immediately arrives at the post office.
In addition to congratulations, the letter contains:
Having entered DevConnect, I found out that there are only 2 certified developers for the whole of Russia. There is a suspicion that not everyone creates a profile in DevConnect after successful certification or does not confirm the status in a year. Yes, the status is not eternal, and it must be confirmed every year.
It turned out that everything was not as difficult as I had thought a year and a half ago. Duration of training depends on your current knowledge, experience and level of English. But even with the level of reading technical texts and understanding the code, it is quite realistic to understand and understand the material of the lecture.
If you have bad English or want to save money - start with passing self-study and primary classes (available in a trial subscription)
What benefits did certification bring to me?
And just 3 days ago I received my presents from Xamarin, a monkey and an icon.
If you have questions, write in the comments or me in the Telegram . I wish you successful certification. :)
PS By the way, after the recent update, the status of Xamarin Certified Mobile Professional has been added - you can get it after passing all the materials for self-study and passing the exam. I was assigned the status automatically in my account:
Alexander Alekseev - Xamarin-developer, freelancer. Works with the .NET platform since 2012. Participated in the development of a procurement automation system at Digamma. C 2015 went into freelancing and switched to mobile development using Xamarin. Currently working at StecPoint on an iOS application.
It manages the XamDev.ru resource and the Xamarin Developers community in social networks: VK , Facebook , Telegram .
I give the floor to Sasha Alekseev (he's notorious in the Japer7 Xamarin community).
On August 12, 2017, I passed the Xamarin certification exam, received my cherished certificate and now I will tell you more about this process.
')
Let's start with the fact that I have C # 5 programming experience and Xamarin 2+ years, so I managed to go through everything pretty quickly.
Xamarin university
I registered on the Xamarin University portal from the moment trial access appeared. The trial includes attending several initial lectures (2 or 3) to get an idea of ​​how the online classes are held at Xamarin University.
Classes are of 2 types:
- self-study;
- online classes.
Self study
It was introduced not so long ago and currently 18 lessons are worked out and available.
Plus self-study is that it is available for free and at any time. Each lesson in itself contains several sections, a video with the theory, practical tasks, blitz polls. After completion, a tick is placed in the office that the topic is passed.
There is more to honesty. Of course, you can click on all sections and pass a blitz survey with 2 or 3 attempts, but this will not help you pass the certification exam, and it will not add to your knowledge.
The most important thing is to complete all the available lectures for self-study, then this is 50% of the way to obtain a certificate.
Online classes
They take place in the form of an online lecture with a presentation where a live teacher tells the theory, after a piece of theory a practical task is performed.
At the beginning of the lecture, the teacher always reminds you that on the lesson page you need to download an archive with materials containing:
- training manual in the form of web files;
- projects for each assignment;
- a project that should be in the end.
Everything is convenient, but there are typos and inaccuracies in the manuals, which was 3 times in my experience, we wrote to the teacher and he brought these errors to correct. It's amazing how after so many streams of students could stay there.
Also, the teacher sometimes conducts blitz polls on the theory, does not affect anything, but it is useful for checking the learned material.
And so, back to practice in the online lesson. She is of two kinds.
Self practice . Each performs the task itself, it is given from 5 to 25 minutes depending on the complexity. The teacher starts the timer and goes about his business, from time to time he, of course, comes back and asks if everything is clear and how progress is being made.
The task is very well described in steps in the manual, if problems arise, then the ready code is always hidden under the spoilers, which should work out after the step.
At the end of the assignment, the teacher is ready to prompt and explain if something does not work. Also in the chat can prompt other students, which sometimes also helps out.
Group practice . In group practice, the teacher does the task with everyone, for the same training manual, explaining and commenting on all his actions. It remains only to repeat after him and delve into the written code.
Plus the online lecture is that you can always ask the teacher a question in a chat or in a voice. At the end of the lesson the teacher answers the questions, until everyone disconnects from the class, if something remains unclear, then everyone will chew and explain.
A very important point, all materials and all online lectures in English, so to ask a question with your voice you need to have at least the minimum speaking skills. There are no materials in Russian, from the word "absolutely."
My conversational speech leaves much to be desired, so I communicated exclusively through chat, but sometimes even the teacher’s speech was incomprehensible to me, so I read the documentation and dealt with the code in detail.
Do not forget about the certification track
A certification track is available in your account - classes that you must complete in order to get admission to a certification exam. It is better to pass lessons in ascending order of numbers, for the best understanding.
In addition to the certification track, there are many other interesting lectures on C #, F #, Azure, Enterprise, and UWP testing. Some lectures are very rare 1-2 times a month, so it is better to take a seat on them in advance.
Class time
Since Xamarin is an American company and they are based in the USA, some online lectures are not held at very convenient times, for example, midnight, 3 am and even 4. There are also afternoon lectures and there are enough of them, but when you need a lesson at 4 one o'clock in the morning, and the next time it will be held only after 2 weeks, then you have to get up so as not to spend waiting for the only lesson.
By the way, at Xamarin University there is an opportunity to request a lecture at a special time, but I did not have to use it.
Occupation is held in any case, even if there is 1 person. At the lecture on asynchronous programming C # I was 1 on 1 with the teacher, it turned out to be a more personalized lesson and communication, he asked some questions and addressed me directly, it was very nice.
But this again, provided good English, unfortunately, I could not answer the teacher something coherent.
Office hour
Online session with Xamarin expert 1 on 1, he can make a review of your code, suggest the architecture of the application or help with other problems. A total of 1 hour per month is given to communicate with an expert, and because of the language barrier, I did not take advantage of this opportunity.
We turn to practice: how I passed the lectures and certification
Since I wanted to save on certification and pass it as quickly as possible, I took advantage of lectures for self-study.
Layfkhak to speed up the learning process watched videos on acceleration, enough speed 1.25x and 1.5x.
Having gone through all the self-study, only after that I signed up, for July 2017 it cost $ 83 a month. I went to the class calendar and planned 2-3 lectures a day.
I will say right away that one online lecture takes from 1.5 to 3 hours, so the day I spent a decent amount of time on training + after each lecture I worked on tasks that I did not have time to do or applications did not work correctly. As I wrote above, some lectures were held late at night or in the early morning.
As a result, in 2 weeks I managed to complete all the classes necessary for certification, and a little more from above, from personal interest in the topics.
Certification exam
After passing all the lectures, access to passing the certification test appears. But you need to carefully prepare for it, because it lasts 3 hours and contains 150 questions, you can skip questions and then go back to anyone and change the answer.
Before the test, I turned off the phones, went to the toilet, brought a cup of water, closed all the tabs in the browser, left only Google, Google translator and a page with Xamarin University. All this happened at night and on weekends, nobody was at home, so even the family did not distract me.
Yes, all this is necessary in order to save yourself a maximum of time and not be distracted from the test.
And time was very necessary, for example, to translate questions and answer choices that were not clear. Also on questions, where he doubted his answer, he used Google to make sure of the correct answer.
During the test, trouble happened, the more questions answered, the more the page with the test in Safari slowed down, and at one point the browser ended with an error. I even panicked a little, but at Xamarin University everything is thought out and you can return to the exam after closing the browser, all the answers remain, but time continues to tick.
Passing the test for the first time, I was sure that at the end I still had a cloud of time, but no matter how, after answering the last question there were 7 minutes left and a few more missed questions. Urgently answered the rest as he considered correct.
And here is my first result - 77% of correct answers, and the threshold of delivery is 80%, a bit offensive, but after the test I understood which topics I had the most difficulty with.
At the end of the test, a list of questions is issued in which he made mistakes, but neither the answer choices nor the option he chose are indicated. Taking all these questions, I drove them into Word and, as I found the answer, put it in this “work on the bugs”.
After such a failure, of course, I lectured on topics in which there were difficulties.
Attempt # 2
And so after 2 weeks, I returned to the test again, strange, but again stay up the night, that's how impatient I was to get tested at midnight)
Although there is a plus in this, the street is quite quiet, and you are as focused as possible. And so again armed with a translator and a cup of water, proceeded to the test. This time, on the last question, I still had 15 minutes left, an excellent result. Enough time to think carefully about the questions that were missed.
And here I press the treasured button of completion of the test and get the result of 87%. I did not expect from myself that I would raise my result by 10%!
A letter of congratulations immediately arrives at the post office.
In addition to congratulations, the letter contains:
- link to the form to send me a gift;
- offer to register in DevConnect - Xamarin developer network;
- Link to the official LinkedIn group of certified developers;
- link to certificate in PDF;
- link to check the status of Xamarin Certified Developer .
Having entered DevConnect, I found out that there are only 2 certified developers for the whole of Russia. There is a suspicion that not everyone creates a profile in DevConnect after successful certification or does not confirm the status in a year. Yes, the status is not eternal, and it must be confirmed every year.
Total
It turned out that everything was not as difficult as I had thought a year and a half ago. Duration of training depends on your current knowledge, experience and level of English. But even with the level of reading technical texts and understanding the code, it is quite realistic to understand and understand the material of the lecture.
If you have bad English or want to save money - start with passing self-study and primary classes (available in a trial subscription)
What benefits did certification bring to me?
- Received 3 job offers during the week with HeadHunter.
- One application for Upwork.
- 1 letter from DevConnect about consultation.
- 2 offers of mentoring.
And just 3 days ago I received my presents from Xamarin, a monkey and an icon.
If you have questions, write in the comments or me in the Telegram . I wish you successful certification. :)
PS By the way, after the recent update, the status of Xamarin Certified Mobile Professional has been added - you can get it after passing all the materials for self-study and passing the exam. I was assigned the status automatically in my account:
about the author
Alexander Alekseev - Xamarin-developer, freelancer. Works with the .NET platform since 2012. Participated in the development of a procurement automation system at Digamma. C 2015 went into freelancing and switched to mobile development using Xamarin. Currently working at StecPoint on an iOS application.It manages the XamDev.ru resource and the Xamarin Developers community in social networks: VK , Facebook , Telegram .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/339164/
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