please help me find my direction.

[Amit Batra]

Hi
I have checked out the study guide that everyone is raving about at Amazon and found two versions. One is the "SCJP Sun Certified Programmer for Java 5 Study Guide (Exam 310-055) (Certification Press Study Guides) published Dec-21 2005.

The other book is the "Sun Certified Programmer & Developer for Java 2 Study Guide (Exam 310-035 & 310-027) "published Dec 11, 2002

What is the diff b/w the two? is the second book good for the SCJP and the SCJD?, while the first is only for SCJP?.

In addition to the K&B book, what other materials would you guys recommend?
Or is just the SCJP study guide for Java 5 enough by itself? Would books like Core Java by Horstmann or thinking in java by Eckels do me any good(For the exam) basically What i am asking is should I 'learn' the language by studying books that 'teah' java first or do that perhaps later, and for now just get into books that are all about training you for the exam period. After having done the SCJP, do you actually feel that you could challenge an intermidiate level programmer ? I guess what Im asking is does having undergone an SCJP make you feel like youre a better and more efficient coder now?

[Deepak Bala]

Yep it has helped me ! I can debug code faster today and write code that avoids making silly errors like accessing non static variables from a static context. It has given me a good foundation to learn other java technologies. The 310-055 version is for SCJP 1.5 and the 310-035 version is for SCJP 1.4. The difference is that 1.5 has more things stuffed into it. These are two versions of the exam for java 1.4 and 1.5. Read other posts here to find out if you want to take 1.4 or 1.5. Yes you can go for other books to support your exam cause. I suggest that you make the SCJP study guide your primary source.

Oh ! and this will help you find your direction :Direction