Words can't quite express how I felt when my print out read "You answered 34 right. Status: Fail" I felt that to come so close was....well, almost as if the gods were mocking me. But it's been a few days and I do feel somewhat better.
A little history, if you're interested. I was hired by CMGI--through a friend. I have a minor in CS but I've never really programmed before...some C++ but a friend had helped me through the tough stuff. Anyway, when you're hired you have to work through a workbook. I was doing fine, learning exponentially, until I cam to the
Java section. This isn't something you can study over the weekend and come in programming on Monday. Anywho...the jig was up and I was let go. I swore to myself that I would conquer Java and get back to programming. I read a few books, like Java in 24 hours(to begin with) than Java in 21 days---than I finally decided to get serious and I set the goal to pass the exam. That was a month and a half ago. I sat down with a Java certification book, but I have to tell you, I started looking at Javaranch about a week before the exam, read
alot of what people wrote, and ordered JQPlus with about 4 days until my exam.
I want thank the developers of JQPlus for getting me as close as I came!!! If I had followed their guidelines of taking a
test a day for 8 days insted of taking 3 tests a day just to finish it, I'm sure I would have passed.
For me, reading theory and than a little code is all well and good, and necessary, but the real meat of learning is when your mind is on fire working through problems and looking for the right answers in a timed situation. I learned more in 4 days than in almost the whole month...or at least what I'd been reading was able to take root.
Anyway, as for the Test itself, I though it was tough, but not as hard as I though it was going to be. The code was all about 12-24 lines long, and almost every question has a 'does not complile' answer. The real enemy is the clock. I was so nervous about answering everything right that I over-checked and re-read...and at the end I didn't even have time to get back all the ones I was unsure about. Anyone who reads these posts should know they are going to hit Threads and I/O pretty heavily--and they do, especially threads. There were a few questions on AWT, but don't spend an in-ordinate amount of time on it. My breakdown was such:
Declarations & Access control..................50%
Flow control & exception handling..............71%
Garbage Collection.............................100%
Language Fundamentals...........................66%
Operators & Assignments........................28%
Overloading, -riding, Runtime Type, and Object
Orientations....................................42%
Threads.........................................42%
AWT package.....................................50%
lang package...................................100%
Util package..................................100%
I/O............................................80%
Anyway, I am obviously a little dissapointed....so close yet so far!
I would appreciate any advice from anyone or insights you may have gained from my experience.....especially from those in my situation, who were a little short the 1st time but PASSED the second time. I'm going to take it again after re-working through JQPlus (I never got to the random exam and only to each test once.) For what its worth, JQPlus was a great investment! The questions, if not totally similar(and in some cases they are) at least replicate the type of thought process you have to follow.
Thanks to everyone for their advice! I'll get'm in a couple weeks!
-Roger
and now you've got a road map!
