At the end of August, I passed the 1C Professional test on technological issues in large implementations. It’s basically your ticket to the main exam, a way to thin the crowd and get people to brush up on the theory.

The test has fourteen questions randomly chosen from around five hundred possibilities. You need at least twelve correct answers. You get half an hour, though five to ten minutes is enough in practice: you can work out most answers or just memorize them. There are inaccuracies and vague wording, but not many. Decent questions, in short.

The selection of topics felt like quite a jumble, a little bit of everything. Still, covering all that ground is probably a good thing: you look at another unfamiliar question, answer it, get it wrong, get over being annoyed, and go find out why. You become a little smarter, though no guarantees.