phew!!!!

[VJ Nairo]

Yall,

I am a pretty experienced programmer (around 6 yrs) who never gave a damn about certification..but my boss insisted last month to take up the certification if I needed a raise (I was like WTF???)...so I decided to brave the path without studying...took my voucher yesterday sat for the exam today...managed to pass it with a meagre 75 %.....
so I can call myself SCJP now and expect a nice fat packet...I still do not think certifications are the right judge..some of the questions were really painfully simple...just my 2 cents..

VJ...

[Thomas De Vos]

Many congratulations with your pay rise

[Erik Brakkee]

Hi VJ,


The exams are a bit bookish and some of the questions are annoying. I had this especially with the SCJP where they ask what the result of a piece of code is or whether the code compiles or not. In many cases, the code samples are just obscure code that would be detected in any code inspection and then replaced by something more clear.

All in all, SCJP is a requirement for the other certifications, and those are really interesting. Even with a lot of programming experience already, I learned a lot in SCJD and the SCWCD and SCBCD were a revelation to me. Sometimes, these days I am really annoyed by colleagues who don't know basic things such as exception handling or transactions in EJB or when they simply don't have an overview of the area of technology in which they are working.

And this sums it up. What you get from these certifications in my opinion is detailed knowledge about a specific technology as well as a good overview of what is possible. Things you would not easily learn on the job.

Cheers
Erik