Pre-submission checking?

[Alan Mac]

Hi All,

I recently came across a site mentioned here, that for $50 reviewed your SCJD submission, tested it and provided feedback. However I've lost the name of the website!

Does anybody know this site or has anybody used their services in the past?

Thanks,
A.

[Tom Henricksen]

softSCJD

Is this the site you were thinking? I have also noticed

Enthu Ware

This is more expensive than softlearn's product. My question about this stuff is this illegal? Does this violate anything we sign when we sign up for the SCJD?
Thanks,
Tom

[Alan Mac]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the reply. Yes SoftSCJD is the one I was talking about.

The instructions.html document I received states...

"You must not use any materials issued to other certification candidates even if you believe they are identical"

and

"you must not submit any code that is not your own work"

I don't believe these instructions can be interpreted as preventing you from having your work checked and commented upon by someone else - a paid third party or otherwise - as long as the final submission is your own work. After all, many (if not most) of the posts here are from people seeking opinions on their ideas or answers to coding questions?

I haven't checked the cost of resubmission, but I'd hate to fail on a technicality that I could prevent by going down this route.

A.
[ August 24, 2005: Message edited by: Alan Mac ]

[Frans Janssen]

It is probably not illegal to use such services (Sun will not be able to tell anyway, so does it matter?). I don't feel that it is in the spirit of the asignment to do that though.

Also I would question the quality you can expect from such a service. For $50 they either have a trained consultant look at it for no more than 15 minutes or they have an undergraduate student trying to make some side money do it.

Furthermore, if you don't have the confidence that the fruits of your own labour will be good enough, you probably chose the wrong profession

Frans.

[Alan Mac]

Frans,

Furthermore, if you don't have the confidence that the fruits of your own labour will be good enough, you probably chose the wrong profession

Almost a decade in programming has taught me the value of a second pair of eyes!

A.
[ August 24, 2005: Message edited by: Alan Mac ]

[Matthew Baranowski]

I agree with Alan. I think all code should go through a review process. I am working on my SCJD assignment and when I am nearly done, I plan on grabbing a friend or two and doing a code review. In a professional setting I would do reviews at number of points along the way ( requirements, function specs, design, etc.).

Matt

[Andrew Monkhouse]

Does SoftSCJD review your Sun assignment code? I thought that the $50 provided you with tutorials and their own assignment (which they will review your solution to).

[Frans Janssen]

Originally posted by Alan Mac:
Almost a decade in programming has taught me the value of a second pair of eyes!

Alan,

I certainly agree with that! Code reviews are an important part of professional software development.

However, since this is an assignment/test, I feel that it would be a bit like cheating to use a professional review service. And I question the quality they can offer for the quoted price.

If you feel more comfortable to have your assignment code reviewed, I would suggest asking a friendly coworker to do it in exchange for a case of beer

Frans.

[Alan Mac]

Andrew,

From the softSCJD website...

"FREE Technical Support. The technical support will include helping users to understand the sample application and also reviewing of the completed SCJD assignments of the customers. Technical Support team will take 5 business days to review the completed SCJD assignment and give its review comments to the customer."

They appear to differentiate between "the sample application" and "SCJD assignments of the customers", so it looks like they do indeed review your assignment. However, I've asked for clarification on this.

I agree with the quality/price question - if they do what they promise then it appears to be very good value! Maybe it's an offshore operation.

Frans,

I can appreciate your point of view, but what's the difference in spending $50 on a case of beer for a mate to review your assignment and giving it to a professional (I hope!) outfit who are (or should be) very familiar with the material and probably (hopefully) run some test harnesses against it and make sure you don't auto-fail on anything?

It's not difficult to fail the SCJD assignment on a technicality - there are plenty of posts to testify to that. I don't think an office colleague would pick up on this. The instructions are quite exacting in their requirements and it's taken me weeks to fully understand them.

Also, just as an aside and I hope no one takes offence to this. People's motivations for taking this exam will differ from person to person. I know some people who live to code and can/will dedicate unlimited time to the assignment. Others (like myself) code to live and have limited time to spend on it. While I have greatly enjoyed the assignment and learned quite a bit (lots from this site!), I'm keen to finish it and move on in the most time efficient manner. I know Sun's turnaround on assessing assignments is slow, so having my assignment pre-checked and avoiding an auto-fail, seems worth $50 to me. Just my 2 cents (Euro)...

[Frans Janssen]

I can appreciate your point of view, but what's the difference in spending $50 on a case of beer for a mate to review your assignment and giving it to a professional (I hope!) outfit who are (or should be) very familiar with the material and probably (hopefully) run some test harnesses against it and make sure you don't auto-fail on anything?

You live in Norway? Because I am happy that a case of beer doesn't cost $50 where I live
But seriously, my point is that if you have someone you know review your code, you will know the quality of the review you will get. Companies have to make profit and as I already mentioned before, for $50 they won't be able to have a trained professional look at it for more than 30 minutes.

That might be just enough to check for the technicalities, but only if that would be the only thing they look at...

Frans.

[Alan Mac]

You live in Norway? Because I am happy that a case of beer doesn't cost $50 where I live

No, Ireland. But, as regards cost of living, Dublin (13) is only 3 places below Oslo (10) - Tokyo is #1, San Francisco #50. Around 4 euros for a pint of Guinness, so count your blessings...

The point I was tring to make was that I'm happy enough with my overall design, functionality, etc. What I'd find useful is to have some automated test harness run against my code that would verify it does everything it's supposed to do. I'd assume anyone in the business of professionally checking assignments would do this. Then again...