Passed with 88%

[Carmen Stuparu]

Hi everybody,
I just passed the test this morning :-) :-) first try, no "real" programming experience but lots of small "test programs" written and almost all mocks test available passed.
I had about 40 questions with code (only about half of them requiring to press the "Exhibit" button), I didn't get any "type-in" questions, the thread questions were quite difficult but I had a few really easy ones on fundamentals! All in all, it's doable!!
I want to thank to everybody involved one way or another in this forum, it was extremely helpful. I was a quiet observer, but only because I found answers to most of my questions just by searching other postings.
Thanks again and best luck to all of you,
Carmen
SCJP

[Tom Graziose]

Congrats Carmen... Good Luck.
-Tom

[deepak bansal]

Congratulations Carmen and good luck !!!
deepak bansal
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Be Truthful to yourself!

[deepak bansal]

Congratulations Carmen and good luck !!!
deepak bansal
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Be Truthful to yourself!

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Be Truthful to yourself!

[John]

Hi,
Well done & good score!!
If you could please help me out with the type of questions that might come for the exam and what sort of questions that you got.
Cos I will be sitting for the exam next week, and I have no programming experience.. so I am a bit worried.
Thanks,
John.

[Carmen Stuparu]

John,
First of all, be confident! If you do well in mock tests and you've written some code (even if you weren't paid to do it) you really have nothing to worry about.
Type of questions ... all range of difficulty, covering all topics, most with 10-15 lines of code. Most of the questions were on threads (lots of code - difficult/very difficult), passing parameters & method identification (code - not too bad), io package(small code and teory - watch for constructors, effect on the file system, char encoding), inner classes, oop concepts (most theory - some tricky). The rest were like 1-2 questions on each other topic: garbage collection, fundamentals, operators, casting/converting, lang package, collection package,layout managers, etc - most with a little code or just pure theory, not too difficult if you know your basics.
I hope this is of some help to you ... I don't know what else to tell you ... just keep your calm during the exam, read carefully the questions and the possible answers (especially for the questions where you have to "exhibit" the code) and GOOD LUCK!!
All the best,
Carmen
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[Jane Griscti]

Congratulations Carmen
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Jane Griscti
Sun Certified Programmer for the Java� 2 Platform

[prakash patil]

congrats carmen !
yhough u didn't get ne fill in the blank questions ,
can u plz tell me which ans are to be included in quotes
thankz
keep doing well!

[shailesh sonavadekar]

Congratulations , Carmen. Great Score. Help others with all the other javaranchers. Share your experiences. Hang out in the forum. All the very best for the future.
Your Friendley Bartender
Shailesh

[Frank Carver]

"john",
The Java Ranch has thousands of visitors every week, many with surprisingly similar names. To avoid confusion we have a naming convention, described at http://www.javaranch.com/name.jsp . We require names to have at least two words, separated by a space, and strongly recommend that you use your full real name.
This name has now beend turned off. Please choose a new name which meets the requirements.
Thanks.

[Tony Alicea]

To the dude formerly know as "John":
If you don't have any programming experience, why are you taking the SCPJ2 Certification exam?
Even Sun says that you should have 6-12 months minimum experience in Java before you take it.
If you think that you can get a job as a Java Developer after passing it without any past programming experience, then you're wrong. Don't waste your time and instead try to get some experience first even if it's only personal code for your Web site or volunteer to do some Web development work for some non-profit org.
The SCPJ2 Certificate alone is not even close to the minimum necessary skills for securing a Java Developer professional position.
But in all fairness, I am concerned by the number of people like (apparently) you that have no programming experience, with some luck get 72% score, and then complain that the Java market is dead because they can't find the $70,000/yr job that they thought they deserved!
My $0.02

[Tom Pridham]

Tony,
I couldn't agree with you more!
Reality is this:
If all you have is a SCJP certificate and NO experience, don't expect a big salary and tons of job offers.
Lately, some people have been saying that the Java job market is cooling off. That is not true. What is happening, is alot of no-experience SCJP'ers are flooding the market looking for work. And when they don't get the world handed to them on a silver platter, they claim the Java Job market must be cooling down.
The Java Job Market has corrected itself like the NASDAQ has. Should a company that loses millions a quarter have stock valued at over $100/share? No. Should a programmer with only an SCJP certificate and no experience make $70,000/ year? No.

[Tom Pridham]

Congratulations Carmen on passing the exam!!

[madhuri vl]

Hi,
Congras for a very good score. Lucky that u did not get any fill up the blanks Q.
But can u please tell me for the Q like in BarryBoon Give the name of the method then Should we give just name like getParameter or getParameter(); - with paranthesis and semicolon.

[Tony Alicea]

Tom: Thanks for "getting it!" :-)
That's THE thing.
The Java market is as hot as it ever was in the USA. For those who know what it is, though.
There's no room for present-day 7-11 cashiers with almost no high school degree much less without a real University degree to fill Java Developer's positions.
GOD says:
WAKE UP!!

[Sivalingam Sivasuthan]

Congratulations!
-Siva.

[Carmen Stuparu]

prakash/madhuri,
Sorry, I really don't know about the fill-in questions; I even asked the office supervisor about this and she didn't know. I was decided to write my answers without quotes and closely following the requirements in the question (like just the name of the method or whatever else they asked). Luckily, I didn't get any type-in questions, but again, my personal feeling is quotes are not needed.
To all of you who congratulated me, thank you guys!
Regarding the other issue discussed in this thread... My opinion is (no question about it) the certification by itself doesn't get you a job. However, I think (and truly hope) that combined with the proper background and especially the coding experience you get (even on your own) is a good starting point in making a programming career. We all have to start somehow...
Carmen.

[Tony Alicea]

Don't include quotes in answers of the type "What are the contents of the String...?"  
I did and I got that (only) one question "wrong". And that's the ONLY reason I didn't get 100% instead of the measly 98% that I did. In the old test which was more difficult.