Passed this morning with 84% - woo hoo !
- Just thought I'd share this with you.
Thanks
Java Ranch. I visited this site quite a bit whilst studying and found the Rules Roundup and groups like this one and the Mock Exams Questions helped a lot. I haven't contributed to any of the groups before, but thought this would be good time to start - so here's a few thoughts that may be of interest to anyone studying for the exam.
The studying:
It took 12 weeks of studying in evenings/weekends (I program in C++ at work) from knowing no Java to passing the exam. Knowing C++ definitely helps, but its still quite a bit of work if you're not using Java in your work. One thing I would say you must do if you're going to take the exam is get Sun's objectives. For some reason I couldn't find them the first few times a visted Sun's website and came to the conclusion that there weren't any official objectives, luckily I tried searching for them a couple of weeks ago and found them that way
http://suned.sun.com/US/certification/java/exam_objectives.html#programmer. I was suprised at how specific they are - they proved invaluable in the last couple of weeks revision. I found IO and AWT particularly daunting, but by focusing on the objectives and drawing out diagrams of the related classes I managed to get 60% and 75% respectively on these (woo hoo !).
I used Syngress/OSbourne "Sun Certified Programmer for Java 2 Study Guide" which gets bad reviews on Amazon, but I found it generally OK (I'd try one of the other exam books that gets better reviews though if I was doing it again) - the website has corrections, and a chapter on io which is missing from the book. I also used Peter vander Linden's "Just Java 2" which is brilliant - I think you'd probably want to have done a bit of programming before using it but it was perfect for me. For mock exams I did all of Marcus's, which were good - thanks Marcus (my scores ranged from 59% - 79% 3 or 4 weeks before taking the real one) - make a note of questions you get wrong and try them again a couple of weeks later (this saves doind the whole exam again which takes about 2 hours and starts to get boring as well as hard work the 2nd time). I also did the 10 example questions on Sun's site(10/10), the rules round up several times, (there was always one
cow that wouldn't go in) and I paid for the JQPlus exam simulator (I got 71% on the random
test) which I'd recommend - although I did feel that some of the questions were outside the objectives. Don't rely on any one mock exam to prove you're ready for the real thing.
The exam:
I'd heard that there was always more than enough time, so I started very slowly and carefully, half way through the exam I had only answered half the questions, and was planning on reviewing some of them - so had to speed up a bit - there is enough time, but don't do what I did and take that as meaning you can afford to take no regard of the time - if you're not sure about a question mark it and come back to it at the end.
I got one question that I felt sure only had one correct answer, but the exam indicated that there were two, I went back to it and after rereading it a dozen times suddenly realised what the 2nd answer was. I had heard that if there isn't a correct answer
you should leave it blank, but I'm not sure if this is true - the introduction to the exam didn't mention this, so I think I would make a guess.
There was a complete mixture of questions ranging from easy to tricky, but I don't think I got any questions that I felt fell outside of the objectives. I think it is a fair test that you have a good understading of the basics, but I imagine that it would be quite possible to be a quite experienced Java programmer and fail it.
OK thats it - I'll post my results on the
http://www.jdiscuss.com/Enthuse/jsp/ViewAllResults.jsp site, so I can see my name up in lights.
thanks Mike + good luck to anyone else studying for the exam.
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