It seems this will be my first post here
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I just got my CLD certificate today so I think I need to write something about it.
I have been using LabVIEW since 1997. I still remember the pain to accidentally did something but was unable to "UNDO" it in LabVIEW. I don't know from where I got that idea that you can just prove your skills by your work, not by those "stupid" certificates...
I went to the LabVIEW seminar (I forgot the formal name of it) this March and somebody told me a quota from the mighty JK: A serious labVIEW programmer shoud be a CLA or on his/her way to achieve the CLA certificate --- may not the exact quota, but you get the idea. So I asked myself: besides having fun with it, am I serious to LabVIEW as well? The raffle winning for a free CLAD exam eliminated my last excuse.
I took the CLAD on late April. The reason it took that long is because I think the passing grade is 80% I got 90, which below my expectation.
Then I started writing the practice exams of CLD and I was shocked. Not the difficult level, but the way you SHOULD write the LabVIEW program. The state machine structure is so much better than the stacked sequence, which I was always using.
After “Car Wash”, “Traffic Light” and “Security System”, I’m using the same style to write new tests in my real works. It really helps.
I drove a full hour to NI’s Mountain View office, 30 minutes before the exam started. I found out the early arrival is a good thing. NI allows you to set up you programming environment before the exam! Another important thing is to learn the new version LabVIEW. My company is using LabVIEW 8.6 but in exam you have to use NI’s version, apparently they are using the latest LabVIEW 2009.
I made a big mistake in exam. I used multiple event structures, totally forgot the pain I encountered in my works before. Different event structures targeting the same control activity was still, as always, a trouble maker in LabVIEW! After tedious debugging, I finally accepted the harsh reality and deleted all but one event structure. That caused me at least an hour.
Another nightmare happens. No matter what I did, one control’s value just won’t change accordingly! I used stepping, I used breakpoint, I used probe. I just can not fix it or even find why? After about 30 minutes, I suddenly remembered that control was used to be monitored by a deleted even structure. Maybe there is a bug in LabVIEW? I closed LabVIEW completely and reopen it. Everything works! I may supposed to report the bug to NI, but I was here to take the exam and clock was ticking.
I wrote those comments like crazy and fix some small bugs on the way. Unfortunately there was not enough time left. I wrote to the least second. When I left the room, my hands are shaky.
I was worried about too little documentation for my program. There were still bugs in functionality. Could I get the magic 70%? I was not sure.
Today I got the email. I was still uncertain and then I was shocked by the score. I got 9.5 out of 10 in documentation and 13 of 15 in style. The bugs only cost me 1 point from 15 in functionality. My final score is 91.25%. Even higher than my CLAD.
Yeah. I’m happy now. To make my day even better, I saw a practice exam of CLA, with solution! Now I don’t need to guess what the CLA exam looks like in dark.
Cheers for my CLD certificate. Next step, CLA:rolleyes:
