[snuff]

Good Morning All,

I just have a quick question about MCAD and MCSD certifications. Has anyone taken these? What are your views on it?

I have a CIS degree from college and wanted to go into the programming field. I took Beginner and Intermediate C++ in college also. What is the best option I should take to persue this?

Are there any other programming certifications out there? Are certifications the best route to take at this point? Thank you all for your help!

[Iron_Cross]

I'm working on the MCAD and MCSD. In my opinion it's agood test. Most people I've talked to respect those certs, and they won't really be a waste of your time at all. For Java there is the SCJP and SCJD (Sun Certified Java Programmer, and Sun Certified Java Developer respectivly).
I'm sure there's plenty other programming certs, but those are some big ones.

[C.Ingram]

What do you want to do in the programming world? If you just want to be a code jockey, what you have is fine. If you want a little more play, certs could help. To be one of the more important members of a development team, you need to look into software engineering and business/management as well.

In the tech field, one degree and/or focused certs are slowly becoming less important. The one thing I like to remind people of is the 90's Internet boom. As a result, people have been telling others to "do something with computers" for years. The result is a flooded job market at the entry and intermediate levels. If you are just a programmer, you resume may not get much attention. If you are a programmer with with a graphic design background, you should have a leg up getting a position on a graphic design related project.