Thanx to a lot of people,
especially to Jane Griscti, Cindy Glass, Farhan Tariq, JUNILU LACAR, Zahid, Butt for correcting my sometimes wrong answers to other peoples questions.
so at the end it wasn't that dificult.
Some tips:
- learn constructors of the java.io classes which manage streams. Especially DataInputStream, DataOutputStream, FileInputStream, FileOutputStream, InputStreamReader, OutputStreamReader, OutputStreamWriter and the RandomAccess stuff.
- learn methods of file class.
- Take as lot as mock questions on Threads as possible and play around with the code. At the end you notice that they are quite the same. There were a lot of
Thread questions in the exam. I got 85% on Threads and wouldn't employ myself as a
Java Thread specialist, if I would be the boss.
- A lot of questions with loops. Allways with quite a bit of code. I used a pen and a sheet of paper to anotate every step during exectution of the loop. You have enough time.
- Are there any questions on Garbage Collections which does not result in a "you cannot say for sure" or ask you "when will this Object be garbage collected?"?
- Awt questions did not ask for methods, but for some knowledge about the layout-managers ("how will it look like, if you use that layout manager?", "what java.awt.event interface will you need?"
- you need to have a clear concept about the overloading, overriding, casting oo-stuff. Lots of questions.
- Also a lot of questions about the language fundamentals (legal identifiers, Arrays, casting of primitive types.
- java.util questions were about a general knowledge of the Interfaces, classes.
- Do it in a relaxed way. I stopped learning yesterday. And today at 11.15 I had the examen.
- Use the time you have and you have a lot. I answered question 59 after 70 minutes. Then I went in the kitchen and took a
coffee. After a break of 10 minutes I revised my answers. And in the first 10 question I found 3 stupid errors !!! In the next questions this wasn't the case. Maybe that in the start of the
test one isn't yet enougth "into" it.
- I had not one fill-in-the-blanks question.
- Jqplus helps a lot for a good score. Many questions of JQPlus were very similar to those of the real exam. Thanx to the jqplus-team. Don't know if you make money with it, but you certainly deserve. The explanations are great.
- Mughal / Rasmussen is a very good book. It was my only certification book. I read it two times (in the start and the week before exam).
The test requires a much shallower knowledge than that you see in many discussion threads in the programmer exam forum of JavaRanch. So don't panic. Enjoy the sofisticated discussions.
Without this forum all the learning stuff would have been much less fun.
So good luck to everybody,
Axel
[This message has been edited by Axel Janssen (edited August 06, 2001).]
[This message has been edited by Axel Janssen (edited August 06, 2001).]