Heres a twist: Instead of passing, I failed!

[Gary Marshall]

All:
After months of studying for the SCJP I finally took the exam for the first time this past Friday and failed it by 10 questions.

My exam had plenty of generics questions (and also contained several things NOT mentioned in K&B, btw). This is one area that I didn't do well in.

So my question to you fine folks is this: in addition to reading and re-reading the K&B chapters on collections and generics, where can I get a good series of exam questions that cover collections and generics?

thanks

[E. Justice]

For specific areas the be tested on I went to:

http://www.danchisholm.net/oct1/index.html

They are set up for the 1.4 exam so it does not cover Generics, however there is plenty on Collections that you can test yourself on. Just go to study guide 1, 2, and Single Topic.

[Dirk Schreckmann]

Without repeating specific questions you had, could you please describe in more detail what was not covered in K&B?

[Akbar Khan]

One area is role of STATIC members when declaring generic class.


: class x <T> {

private int i = 7 ; //just setting an instance variable

Static <T> obj ; //you cannot do like this..

what will happen with a static method...

-----------------------------------------------

Second area neglected in k&b book :

Methods in File writer classes Date format and number format classes..like append and replacement...

[Gary Marshall]

Let me first qualify my remark made earlier. I have little Java programming exposure outside of 14 months of Java coding 2 1/2 years ago plus the last 4 months of exposure to this training campaign. So when I say I had seen things on the exam that I had not seen in K&B, that also includes code I have never seen anywhere. For example: " if (false)", and Math.PI and Math.(....I can't remember the other "Math" one). I remember there being a couple of other incidences of strange-to-my-eyes code in the exam, code presented on exhibits that I swear I had never seen before. I certainly remember saying to myself "what the heck is that?" when I saw it. I'm thinking it was just a lack of sufficient amount of exposure to Java code. Anyway, I walked away from the exam smarter because I then new what to expect the next time around, and at the same time I thought that in order to pass this exam you would have to have a couple of years of Java coding under your belt in order to understand all the nuances that exist in the code that is presented in the exhibits. Now I know there are folks out there that have passed this exam with flying colors with little or no Java coding experience other than what they have accumulated by following K&B, like the gal last week who got 100% - truly amazing. Anyway, this is what I remember.

[Christophe Verré]

"what the heck is that?"

Welcome to SCJP !

Good luck for your next attempt.

[Akbar Khan]

Lack of programming experience doesnot result in failure in SCJP.

[Bharat Makwana]

G Marshall:
Good luck next time.But I think you had not taken enough mock exams. Would you mind mentioning how many mock exam had you solved ??

Math.PI and if(false), are very comman in java Programming.

Anyway good luck

[Gary Marshall]

Originally posted by Bharat Makwana:
Math.PI and if(false), are very comman in java Programming.

These may be quite commononly used in the Java world, but inside the two inch thick world of the K&B book, they are not mentioned.

I have taken Whizlabs exams, all of them, a couple of times. I had to stop taking them as I was remembering the answers, which doesn't help if you are trying to understand and retain the concepts. So then I spent my time between going over all of the test questions at the ends of the chapters in K&B and taking Marcus Green's mock exams. I was doing well with the Green exams - finishing off with scores in the high 70 percent area. So I Thought I would give the real one a try. The Green questions were far easier than the real exam. The level of complexity was much greater on the real exam vs. Green's, but that is not to say I would not recommend to anyone to stay away from Green's exams. I will continue taking them while I find other exams that I can take that have the complexity level of the real exam. I'm thinking the "Inquisition" would be a good start. Any suggestions?

[Brad Clarke]

I've been coding in Java on and off since 2000 and there are things I've seen in the K&B book and the Whizlabs exams that made me go "WTF is that?".

I've got 7 years of Java, but I have not had to use a large percentage of the stuff available in Java. A lot of my experience is working with classes that are not on the exam. Collections are my downfall, as I've never had to use anything other than ArrayLists to accomplish what I needed to do.

The majority of questions I have failed on the Whizlabs exams have been Collection related.

All of my co-workers tell me that the Whizlab exams are harder than the real one....I guess that's not always the case.

[Manfred Klug]

Originally posted by Akbar Khan:
Static <T> obj ; //you cannot do like this..

That is the problem. Sometimes you must understand concepts and not code fragments.

[Gary Marshall]

Originally posted by Brad Clarke:

The majority of questions I have failed on the Whizlabs exams have been Collection related.

All of my co-workers tell me that the Whizlab exams are harder than the real one....I guess that's not always the case.

Yeah - collections and generics was an area on the exam that gave me a hard time. I think this is one areas on the exam that gives the exam authors a real fertile ground for making complicated questions.

And, in my opinion, given all of the mock exams I have taken so far, I would say that Whizlabs exams are the closest to the real thing in regards to having complex questions. I don't think real exam questions were easier than Whizlabs, though that seems to be the common opinion in this forum.

I'm still looking for suggestions from folks for strenuous mock exams I could take. Can anybody give an opinion about Enthu Ware? Are their exams as rugged like the real thing?
thanks

[Jesper de Jong]

These are not really SCJP exam questions, but I hope this is useful anyway: Check out Angelika Langer's Java Generics FAQ. It contains a lot of detailed information about generics.

[Brad Clarke]

I joined the club as well.

Missed passing by 4 questions.

Collections/Generics killed me.

I didn't have the option of rescheduling the exam, as the voucher my employer gave me expires tomorrow, so they would rather have someone use it and possibly pass the exam than to have the voucher expire and have the money totally wasted.

Oh well, I've seen what the real exam is about and know what to expect th next time.

[Shashank Sharma]

You all scared me guys
I am practicing Java past 6 months.Now I am really confused what I should do.
Is it really very difficult.

[kumarth ravi]

How many questions were given on collections/generics ?.
Generally Minimum how many questions come from generics/collections?

thank you

[Joshua Mark]

Originally posted by Bharat Makwana:

Math.PI and if(false)

Just to clarify for others that are studying for the test, like me :-), both of these concepts are in fact covered in the K&N book, just not very thourally.

There is a paragraph or two that talks about the Math package and how it is a static class. Specifically I remember there is a sentence that talked about Math.PI constant. I've used the Math package for a few years now so I already knew what it was and how to use it, but I do remember reading it in the book. It was in the section that deals with arithmatic, ie....+, -, *, /, etc.....

I am at work right now, so I am trying to remember the pages from the book in my head right now, but I think chapter 5 (or 6) contains the if/then statements along with loops, etc....In that section, it doesn't specifically say if (false), but it does talk about things like while(true).....which is the same effect. And it does specifically mention something to the fact that it doesn't matter what is between the ( ) as long as it evalutates to either true or false. If it doesn't evaluate to true or false, then you get an error/exception. So in you case if the if(false) { ....} doesn't also have an else statement, it's pretty much wasted space as it will never be allowed to execute. On the other hand if it was if(true) { ... } and it contains an else statement, it would never execute the else statement so that would be wasted space.

Hope that helps....

Joshua

[Bert Bates]

My two cents:

Java is a language, as such the number of possible constructs is vast - far too big a number to hope to contain in a book.

I think the concept that's missing from this thread is that an essential part of studying for this exam is to write lots of code. Write lots of little Java programs to test stuff out. I can tell you that we wrote hundreds of little programs while we were working on the book, and we hear over and over again from candidates who have done well, that they ALL write lots of code as part of their studies.

Just the other day someone in the beginner's forum asked if they could learn Java from a book if they didn't have access to a computer - the overwhelming response was that you could only go so far using a book - that you really had to pound the keyboard too

hth, and good luck on your next try!

Bert

[sudha javvadi]

I am gonna take the exam within the next 15 days.Now I am scared. By the way, is Math on the exam scjp1.5?

thanks,
sudha