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SCJP

 
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Today I googeled to this site, I'm sceduled for 16th july for the exam
I read Katy Sierra and Bert Bate's book (up to developer's section) and I got about 85-95% of the book tests right (average of both - end of chapter and exam, after first try)
Please answer me some questions:
Why do you care if the score is high or not? or who does care about it?
Say I pass with 55%, what is bad about it?
What is your guesstimate on how I will do on the exam? considering the percent value I gave above and that I work with java, jsp for last 1 year.
Those who failed, (if any) did you fail because of lack of preparation or the exam questions may differ from those in the books?
And why do you take the exam at all? I'm doing it to improve my resume, but not sure if anyone is going to care about it.
I promise to post my result and experience after I take the exam..
Wish me luck!
 
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Greetings from Hogwarts,

Bro, reasonable questions. If you are already working in java and jsp for an year now, it shouldn't be difficult for you to get a decent score. Why score matters?? It is to satisfy your ego.. Otherwise it has not much significance. As u know by now, the exam objectives cover far less than what you really need and do out there. But then this exam is like the starting step.

Just read K&B from cover to cover and you would do more than just pass. U would do like 90%. And just take the three mock exams of Marcus. They really help in puffingup ur confidence. All the best
 
Sania Marsh
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Thanks for reply.. calming
Does 'Bro' go for girls also?
My name doesn't sound too girly, does it?
 
Brian Percival
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Greeting from Hogwarts,

U r a gal??? I apologize.. I didn't even consider that while replying.. Just thought of asking where u r from, but did a quick google search on the name.. and found couple of interesting sites. So u from czech/slovak ?? And when is the test? I took the test and got 90%. Just be real good with threads, strings and stringbuffers, consequences of stringbuffer variables being declared final etc..
k&B rocks!!!
 
Sania Marsh
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Hmm... Close with slovak..I speak russian, but My full name is not Gula, it is for short. Uz is not my name at all, but it is very much related to me. Exam is sceduled for 16th - 3 days left.(scared)
Threads I'm fine with (I think, exam will show ), but string buffers - ng, I never had to use them, so not much experience there, I read about them, though. I will have to just memorize all the methods for wrappers, stringbuffers.. I also have hard time memorizing all small details about nested classes.
I read here some people take days off from work to prepare - that scares me, all I did is spend couple of weekends to read the book..
Well, hey, that would be an experiment - "how well you can do spending just 2 weeks to prepare" or "how to fail SCJP in 2 weeks"
 
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If you are trying to 'memorize' things for exam, I would say good luck my friend!!! Lot of question in SCJP will be confusing and type of questions will be little different from those you will find in various mock exams. So...
 
Sania Marsh
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I will take the test and let you know if your wishing luck helped or not... Now, you didn't have to memorize anything, you knew absolutely every method and all small details you needed for exam, right? I can bet that even if you have written program for every topic you had to go back review everything and you would find that you couldn't keep some stuff in head. Raise your right hand and answer . I'm doing fine on mocks, so...
 
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"Bro" is used mainly by black American youth gangs to address other members of the gang.
While short for "brother" it is sometimes used to address female members as well and then used as an honorific, the term "Sista" (derived from "sister") being more appropriate.

Just memorising everything won't help you pass the exam, or shouldn't.
It's designed such that you need to understand code, not just rules from a book.

I've 5 years of experience and there's things in the exam I found I had never fully understood.
I'm currently in a second reading of the study material I purchased and plan to take the exam in 2 months or so (I must admit I don't have time to spend more than an hour, maybe 2, a day on studies which of course slows me down but my experience should compensate for that).
Personally I find the way the questions are worded sometimes a bit confusing, maybe they just don't fit my brain well. That can be a severe handicap of course...

The ONLY way to keep things in your head for more than a few days is to use them regularly in realworld applications.
If you've ever crammed for an exam only to find out that when talking about the subject after you'd not looked at it for a while and discover you'd forgotten half of it you know what I mean...
 
Sania Marsh
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Ok, Ok, I'm not memorizing absolutely everything, but there are things, like some math methods I have to look over and over again, to make sure I remember what returns and takes what, Or syntax of thread constructors,
what if I will be asked if Thread(Runnable, ThreadGroup) is the right costructor - seems right, but not.. Or that there is a difference between properly overriden hashcode and efficiently overriden. I would think hashcode that returns always same value is not proper - but it is. I couldn't find much about StringBuffers in the K&B book, and don'n know what Brian ment when he said "consequences of stringbuffer variables being declared final" Isn't it just like any other reference variable being declared final?
I knew basics of all topics of the exam before I started preparing, so I have to learn all small details now. If you think I'm not ready, let me know, so I postpone the exam, I have exam tomorrow and after all these posts I feel really uncomfortable..
Jeroen Wenting, are you preparing for SCJP right now? so did you fail the first time?
 
Brian Percival
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Greetings from Hogwarts,

Sista , don't let others experiences bother you.. Not everyone can spend the same amount of time and so not everyones "day count" of preparation time is not the same.. But looks like you are prepared. And I agree with you that SCJP involves a lot of memorization when it comes to the wrapper classes, static Math methods and constants etc. The best thing is to read these sections of K&B,you know, those tables just 2-3 hrs before the exam. Atleast that's what I did. And as far as these topics are concerned, I think there is not much scope of twisting and tweaking. And ur thoughts on StringBuffers is correct. Calling append() or whatever on a string buffer reference shouldn't cause any errors since the object values can always be changed as long as a new reference value is not assigned to the variable. Key is to realize that when the methods are called, a new object is not created and assigned to the variable.

Also you should recognize that assertions and the ternary operator ( ?: ) are completely different.. Think of the possibilities of what happens if you combine both.

"Memorizing" all the allowed modifiers (access/nonaccess) that can be applied to (ANONYMOUS/nonanonymous) inner classes ( when they appear in all possible places, like arguments etc etc) would be helpful...

In the end all it matters is the state of mind before/while taking the exam. Mock exams really help you to make the panic/freakout time lesser, so u can quickly concentrate onthe questions..

Tomorrow is the D-Day and once again, all the best.
[ July 15, 2004: Message edited by: Brian Percival ]
 
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If I got the K&B do I need the Head First Java too or is it a waste of money? Where are the mock exams at? Thanks!
 
Sania Marsh
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Mock exams list: http://www.javaranch.com/mock.jsp
Head Firs Java is an excellent book, and never is waste of money, but it is not SCJP preparation book, it teaches the Java itself, assuming reader doesn't know Java. on the other hand, K&B assumes that you already have some Java background and it's goal it to prepare the reader for SCJP.
I think it depends on how deep you know Java already, if you are beginner, you may want to get Head First Java - it's fun book, the best book I ever read, I was almost crying first time I started reading it - it was that exciting.
Some people find it silly because of all the pictures and jokes, I think those people are just boring, and don't find programming fun.
 
Johnny Hunter
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You mean you are laughing while reading techie books? What's up with that...
 
Sania Marsh
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Originally posted by Next Stepguy:
You mean you are laughing while reading techie books? What's up with that...



You know... reading this, I feel like I don't fit in this forum... or..maybe you will understand if you read the book.
By the way, I realized I remember things better if book makes me smile, even if it is techie.

Anyways, I have exam in 3 hours.. Next post will be with my results..
 
Sania Marsh
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Brian, Bro,
Thank you for support, I passed with 90%,
and you were right about K&B - no need for anything else, and
"memorizing" helped me answer at least 3 questions, that were asking for the return type, and some method signatures..
Thanks everyone, I'm going for developer now..
 
Deb Sadhukhan
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Congratulation! Good job.

I'm surprised to read that memorizing so many things only helped "at least 3 questions", since you wrote earlier

I will have to just memorize all the methods for wrappers, stringbuffers.. I also have hard time memorizing all small details about nested classes.

. I'm sure there were lot more than 3 questions from those areas. :roll:

Just trying to give you hard time...
 
Sania Marsh
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Awww... Come on,
Take a random person that knows what a wrapper is, and ask what all constructors each wrapper has, chances are the person will not get it right, true? (suggested answer: true)
Then take a person that knows what is a StringBuffer, and knows for sure it is not String, and is mutable, but never had to use it. Ask that person the common methods for StringBuffer. Would you expect the correct answer? (you know the suggested answer)

I wasn't trying to memorize the answers of mock exams, just the syntax of common methods, I don't think there was any other way for me to remember that.
Some things do make sence, like , for example that abstract and final don't go together - that is no brainer, and easy to remember, but can an abs() method return negative number, in my wildest dream I wouldn't think of "yes" answer.

I was just expecting the exam to be much harder, and more syntax-oriented. Not that I'm dissapointed, I just didn't know what to expect, and I was scared to death after your reply - don't be so rough, that reply cost me two sleepless nights.
Anyways it's all in the past along with memorizing I will study for developer and web developer now, with not as much memorizing this thime .
This thread should be named "Memorizing"
 
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Respect for java female coders. There are still few of them among java-junkies.
 
Brian Percival
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Greetings from Hogwarts,

Sista , hearty congrats.. I knew you would make like around 90 coz that's what I made . I too have 1 year exp with java and jsp but like 2 yr gap after that. Then I just studied K&B on and off and finally gave the test.. The problem with SCJP is there really is stuff to "memorize" which you otherwise would never do working "out there" since while at job everything is open book.. I guess this makes SCJP a little irksome for programmers with experience.

But over the years SCJP has softenedup a lot.. When I first learnt java,(like in 2000-01) u had awt ( which is difficult and sucks-- ofcourse personal opinion) and io topics and also you are not given the number of right answers to choose. And you need to choose all the correct ones. And they used to have highly irksome qs like, if u are asked to select all those that are true and if all are true, they you haveto check 5 ( all of the above) and also 1,2,3,4.

And then they reduced the cutoff for passing.. All this sometimes makes me think that the standards are compromised. I mean, u don't have awt(no complaints),io( very important) and now have assertions ( no big deal about them at all and which, again is a highly memorization topic).
I think assertions is not exactly a reasonable replacement for awt and io. Atleast awt should be replaced with swings and io should still be there. And assertions could be added ( which is not really a lot to understand and break your head on.. no new concepts here..)

but then.. what would I know ..

PS: Everything above is my personal opinion and not meant to offend anyone. Welcome to argue.. but don't abuse me unreasonably
 
Sania Marsh
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I think what they were trying to achieve by removing awt is test on logic and basic OO principles, rather than on something that is built on OO knowlege. If you understand inheritance, inner clasess and interfaces well, you will understand awt and swing - and there is too much memorizing in those . Files.. I think they should have tested on basic knowlege of serialization, IOExceptions, but, well they must know better, they must be having way better understanding of what is proper...
 
Deb Sadhukhan
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Gula,

Oh boy!!! I don't mean to give you two sleepless nights. Sorry about that. But look at the bright side of it. Did it help you to score better?

You are always taking example of wrappers, constructors etc. Things I had in mind also include nested class, accessibility etc. Hey, I never said you don't have to memorize absolutely anything. You already wrote that memorizing helped you to answer (at least) 3 questions. That proves there is very little need for remembering things - blindly.

This is last posting on this thread. No point making this a "memorable experience". Also possibly costing your another sleepless night!!!

 
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