Mughal & Rasmussen book

[Peros Kalogerakos]

A question for those of you who have used Mughals PGJC book (Programmers Guide to Java Certification) to pass the cert. His chapters are really detailed and a friend told me he has more info than I need to know for the SCJP. (This guy said the RHE book had less detail than Mughals)
I notice the chapters have "Exam Objectives" and "Supplementary Objectives" - should I just focus on the exam objectives and skim over the "supplementary obj" ?
I know that to learn the language fully I should cover everything - but technically if I was just focused on the cert right now could I skim the supplementary stuff?? (then come back to it later and take my time).
It feels like I will never get through this book - each page has so much info to digest - how will I ever be able to remember 600 pages of Java specs!!
Any advice pertaining to this book and my dilemma appreciated.
Thanks!

[Rob Ross]

If you approach it from the goal of "trying to memorize 600 pages" then I suppose that's going to be very hard.
However, if you try "learning java", and use the book as a guide, and write a lot of programs, then over time you will learn how java works, and not have to memorize anything, because you will have internalized it!
Rob

[Rick Reumann]

Originally posted by Rob Ross:
<snip> and not have to memorize anything, because you will have internalized it!
Rob

I agree with that up to a point Rob The problem I'm finding as I get closer now to taking the test in about a week is that what ends up being the final hurdle is the API memorization stuff. Not sure if the mocks are much different than the real exam, but you still end up having to memorize some things. For example a lot of methods in the Math class. For example I know now because it comes up so much that the round() method taking a double returns a long and the round method taking a float returns an int, but truthfully I find that kind of rote memorization for this kind of test pretty silly. I'm sure it's good to know that the Math class has those kinds of methods but lets face if I want to be sure what's it's returning I just pull up the API. Same thing I'm noticing with a lot of the AWT stuff. I agree it's probably good to know the layouts, basic components, and even many of the listeners and events, but to have to remember that a TextField constructor can take ( int columns, String text ) vs ( String text, int columns ) is very annoying. I mean is that really testing how well you know the language? (Ok maybe I'm pissed because I got that wrong on a mock test last night .
But seriously, though, if you notice most of the questions that even come up here have to do with the fundamentals and that should be the key. Rarely do people come in and ask, "What are the constructors for the Dialog class?"
All of this brings me back to the book question that was asked. I happened to really like both books, but personally I don't feel RHE covered enough of the 'memorization' stuff that seems to come up a lot. Probably that was a good idea in the development of the book as it really helps the student get down to the basics. M&Rs book seemed to list a lot more class methods and constructors.
Peros, definately skip the chapters on swing stuff, though. In regard to the supplemental objectives for each chapter, unfortunately I found you can't really try and pick and choose from the chapters what is supplemental. Certain pages and paragraphs often blended in concepts that might be supplemental and that weren't. As Rob mentioned just work on learning the stuff in there. When it comes to trying to learn supplemental pure memorization stuff (return types, arguments, etc.) I would definitely skip that.
What I did that I found very helpful (well I hope it was helpful. We still have to see if I pass , was to read each book one time straight through practicing the code and making sure you understand everything in there. Then for both books I started over from scratch and took notes from each chapter. You could of course start out taking notes right away but I found it cool to get a good overview first and then go back and start over again.
Once you get all the concepts down from the books, and do some coding and ask a lot of questions, then work on memorizing some stuff. That's what I've been doing now in my last week of preparation and it's really helped. I could be wrong but it seems you get to a point where you eventually know (or at least should know) the fundamental concepts and traps that seem to come up. Afterwhich you then have do have to work on some memorization stuff. Clearly if you are working with AWT, Threads, and File IO on an every daily basis you may not need to memorize some stuff. ( I tend to work with JDBC and most of the Collection classes quite frequently but not AWT. Wish they would have picked some JDBC suff to test on vs AWT . Bottom line is I'm running into some things that I'm just going to have hunker down and memorize. Memorization certainly isn't the focus of the test so I certainly wouldn't worry aobut that. Learning is diffently the key and then if you have time work on memorizing a few things that you might not code with on a normal basis (or at all .

[Valentin Crettaz]

What I did that I found very helpful (well I hope it was helpful. We still have to see if I pass , was to read each book one time straight through practicing the code and making sure you understand everything in there. Then for both books I started over from scratch and took notes from each chapter. You could of course start out taking notes right away but I found it cool to get a good overview first and then go back and start over again.

That's an excellent advice Rick.

Clearly if you are working with AWT, Threads, and File IO on an every daily basis you may not need to memorize some stuff.

Definitely !!! Don't see the memorizing thing as a burden. If you do practice a lot, the memorizing thing happens without even noticing it. But you have to practice a lot until you don't have to look in the API. By that I'm not saying that one should know the API by heart but at least the most-commonly used parts of it, that is the one specified on the objectives... That's not very much if you come to think of it.

Memorization certainly isn't the focus of the test so I certainly wouldn't worry aobut that. Learning is diffently the key and then if you have time work on memorizing a few things that you might not code with on a normal basis

I couldn't agree more but the goal of the last sentence should be achieved by explicit coding instead of just harsh memorizing...

[Anonymous]

Great advice guys...As far as Khalid Mughal's book is concerned, I used it as the only source for my Java Certification Exam. The book is great. Learning from PGJC will be an enriching experience.