Take Free Online Java Practice Tests (And You Might Win A $100 Amazon Gift Card)

[Rob Schipull]

Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:There was one other, but I didn't write it down. I'll keep track when I take other exams.

Thanks Jeanne. I found the one you originally pointed out and that has been corrected. I'll see if I can track down the other one you mentioned.

rob

[Roel De Nijs]

Rob Schipull wrote:Was the "filed vs. field" the only one you saw?

I didn't pay attention when taking FT001, but I did when I took FT002. Here's my list (of nitpicking errors):

String Split method --> should be "split" (Java is case sensitive)

String in Foo < string > f --> should be Foo < String > f (Java is case sensitive)

the parent class of a Container? --> Container is way to general in this question. You could have a Container class, a servlet container, a Container interface, a specific class from AWT and so on

NullPointeExceptions and null checks --> should be NullPointerExceptions

[Rob Schipull]

Roel De Nijs wrote:
I didn't pay attention when taking FT001, but I did when I took FT002. Here's my list (of nitpicking errors):

Thanks Roel. We'll make the appropriate fixes.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Found the other typo I saw (I got the same question on field test 2 so wrote it down this time)
classCastException -> ClassCastException

There were a few others with case like:
Foo < string >
DeSerialization

Also,
use multiple catch block. -> use multiple catch blocks.
NullPointeExceptions -> NullPointerExceptions

[Rob Schipull]

Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:Found the other typo I saw (I got the same question on field test 2 so wrote it down this time)
classCastException -> ClassCastException

Boy, you guys are good!

thanks Jeanne!

rob

[Roel De Nijs]

I didn't notice on my 1st survey, but I did on the second one: the three personal questions at the start are also numbered and that's why the survey has 53 questions. I assume the number of correctly answered questions doesn't take these questions into account, but is your score on the 50 Java questions.

[Rob Schipull]

Roel De Nijs wrote:I didn't notice on my 1st survey, but I did on the second one: the three personal questions at the start are also numbered and that's why the survey has 53 questions. I assume the number of correctly answered questions doesn't take these questions into account, but is your score on the 50 Java questions.

Yes, you are correct. The 3 demographic questions at the beginning of the test are not factored into your total score. Your total score is factored on the 50 Java questions in each Field Test.

rob

[Roel De Nijs]

Rob Schipull wrote:Yes, you are correct. The 3 demographic questions at the beginning of the test are not factored into your total score. Your total score is factored on the 50 Java questions in each Field Test.

Great! So I scored even better on the 1st survey. Yay!


I just took the FT003 survey and found these typos:

Runtime exception - classCastException --> should be ClassCastException

SuperClass method --> in the code snippet "superClass method" is used, so either the code snippet has to be changed or the answer options

I encountered these ones in every survey so far, so should be fixed in every survey.

Then I think the question Which of these interfaces are marker? is just wrong: the interfaces listed in the options are not interfaces, some of them don't even exist. Serialization should be Serializable, Externalization should be Externalizable and probably Collections should be Collection.

Finally, I guess that the question about the ReentrantLock could be wrong as well, but threading questions are always hard. But from the code, I guess that two threads are competing to get a lock. So one thread will succeed, the other one will fail. So the output has to have one "ThreadX got lock" message and one "ThreadY failed to get lock" message. The "threadX tries to lock" message has to be always before the "threadX got lock" or "threadX failed to get lock" message. But if 1st thread succeeds or fails is unknown. So I believe more than one answer could be correct and you could only select one answer.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

fyi - i stopped after FT 3. Too many of the questions were the same so it got boring.

[Roel De Nijs]

Some typos from FT004:

Int --> int (in question about which data types can NOT be used in a switch statement)

Which data type could not be evaluated in a switch expression until java 6? --> "until java 6" should be "before java 7" ("until" is ambiguous: is java 6 included or not, depends on interpretation)

HashCode and ArrayList --> hashCode

HashCode and equals --> hashCode

Concurrenthashmap --> ConcurrentHashMap

from Synchronized block --> synchronized

a NUMERIC(VARCHAR, BLOB) data type --> NUMERIC(VARCHAR, BLOB) is a very, very strange data type

And I have doubts about the correctness of these questions:

Which of these is not an escape sequence? --> \b and \f are valid escape sequences, but the two others are not and I could select only one (source)

and the question about local variables also has 2 correct answers, but you can select just one (illustrated in this code snippet)

public static void main(String[] args) {  
    final int i; // declare final var
    System.out.println("Java rocks!");
    i=15; // and initialze later
    
    class Abc {
        void go() {
            // and use in inner class defined in method
            System.out.println(i);
        }
    }
}

Kind regards,
Roel

[Rob Schipull]

Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:fyi - i stopped after FT 3. Too many of the questions were the same so it got boring.

Thanks for taking the time to go through 3 Field Tests Jeanne, and thanks for pointing out some of the typos we had in our questions. We really appreciate it.

rob

[Rob Schipull]

Roel De Nijs wrote:Some typos from FT004:

Int --> int (in question about which data types can NOT be used in a switch statement)

Which data type could not be evaluated in a switch expression until java 6? --> "until java 6" should be "before java 7" ("until" is ambiguous: is java 6 included or not, depends on interpretation)

HashCode and ArrayList --> hashCode

HashCode and equals --> hashCode

Concurrenthashmap --> ConcurrentHashMap

from Synchronized block --> synchronized

a NUMERIC(VARCHAR, BLOB) data type --> NUMERIC(VARCHAR, BLOB) is a very, very strange data type

And I have doubts about the correctness of these questions:

Which of these is not an escape sequence? --> \b and \f are valid escape sequences, but the two others are not and I could select only one (source)

and the question about local variables also has 2 correct answers, but you can select just one (illustrated in this code snippet)

public static void main(String[] args) {  
    final int i; // declare final var
    System.out.println("Java rocks!");
    i=15; // and initialze later
    
    class Abc {
        void go() {
            // and use in inner class defined in method
            System.out.println(i);
        }
    }
}

Kind regards,
Roel

Roel,

Thank you for the thoroughness of your efforts in going through our questions. We are making all of the suggested changes you are recommending.

thanks,

rob

[Roel De Nijs]

Only one type for FT005: System.getCurrentTimeMillis() --> System.currentTimeMillis()

And I found this question What is a disadvantage of try-with-resource? pretty weird, especially with one of the options being "introduced in Java 7"...

And in another question the FileNotFoundException is used in an import statement, but isn't used in the code snippet (instead Exception is used). And in that same question and code snippet, there seems to be something wrong with the horizontal alignment of the code: the bottom of the method signature is missing.

[Rob Schipull]

Thanks Roel. We'll take a look at it now.

rob

[Roel De Nijs]

Just have finished FT006. Here are some remarks:

Iterator returned by HashMap on key, value and entry is --> a HashMap doesn't return iterators, but returns a Set (keySet, entrySet) or a Collection (values)

in the question about JDBC where you have to tell for what this code is typically used, one of the variables is named englishProcedure and that's a nice give-away

The following code would be typical of which design pattern? --> in the main method you see two threads being created creating a c1 and c2 instance but you only see the code of the c1 class

The following deployment descriptor with a servlet named ServletDemo will --> only an xml fragment is shown, so I wonder how compilation can fail as you don't compile this xml fragment, you compile the ServletDemo class but this code isn't shown

That's it for me! All surveys taken, no more fun for me

[Rob Schipull]

Roel De Nijs wrote:Just have finished FT006.
That's it for me! All surveys taken, no more fun for me

Roel,

I can't tell you how much I appreciate you taking the time to go through all of the Field Tests and provide feedback on some of the Q&As. Your feedback has been extremely helpful.

Anything you can mention in this thread about the questions, or the test taking process, that others thinking of spending the time to answer the questions might find helpful?

thanks again,

rob

[Roel De Nijs]

Rob Schipull wrote:I can't tell you how much I appreciate you taking the time to go through all of the Field Tests and provide feedback on some of the Q&As. Your feedback has been extremely helpful.

You're welcome!

Rob Schipull wrote:Anything you can mention in this thread about the questions, or the test taking process, that others thinking of spending the time to answer the questions might find helpful?

I don't think I can add something which is not already mentioned in previous posts:

only 2 emails sent: one with the link to take the survey and another one with your score after finishing the survey

questions on a variety of topics: Java, JDBC, threads, Spring, JPA, Hadoop, Swing, and so on

takes 15-20 minutes to answer a survey

you can save your progress and come back later to finish a survey (I didn't try this myself)

although there are 50 questions for each survey, 10-15 questions are repeated in every survey (to link them across multiple surveys) so if you have a good memory (or take all surveys one after the other) you can finish the survey even faster because you remember all answers for these recurring questions

it's just fun

Kind regards,
Roel

[Roel De Nijs]

Rob Schipull wrote:We are hoping to have between 250-400 responses for each question for a research project we are working on.

What's the current status? Did you already have reached your target?

[Rob Schipull]

Roel De Nijs wrote:
What's the current status? Did you already have reached your target?

Hello Roel,

Thanks for checking in, and inquiring about the status. Unfortunately, the activity has slowed down quite a bit so we are a long way from our target of between 250-400 responses, in the "Completed Tests" column below. Here is the current breakout by Field Test:

Field Test	Signed Up	Completed Tests	Completion%
Java FT001	84	20	23.8%
Java FT002	6	3	50.0%
Java FT003	3	2	66.7%
Java FT004	2	1	50.0%
Java FT005	1	1	100.0%
Java FT006	5	1	20.0%

Once we moved into the "Blatant Advertising" category, on Code Ranch, the participation dropped pretty quickly. Any thoughts on getting the word out and increasing participation?

thanks again for all of your help,

rob

[Roel De Nijs]

Rob Schipull wrote:Here is the current breakout by Field Test:

As I took all 6 field tests, it seems I'm currently the only one who completed tests 4, 5, and 6.

Rob Schipull wrote:Once we moved into the "Blatant Advertising" category, on Code Ranch, the participation dropped pretty quickly. Any thoughts on getting the word out and increasing participation?

I don't think moving it to the "Blatant Advertising" category was causing the significant drop (because if I remember correctly I did it almost immediately). Anyway I removed it from this category.

I can think of several reasons why participation decreases:
1/ I think most people see very little added value for them: you take the survey, you get your score and you don't know which ones you answered correctly or not. So there is currently no learning opportunity. You expect people to invest their precious time, but there is no or very little (only your score) return on investment at all.
2/ Also the setup of these field tests probably don't attract people, because it's a combination of beginner, intermediate and advanced questions. But someone with only 3 months Java experience is not interested in answering some questions about intermediate and advanced topics, because they can only guess at 2/3 of the questions (if the three different levels are distributed evenly).
3/ In all the forums new topics/threads are created on a daily basis, so if there's no action in this thread, this thread will move to the bottom of the forum overview and thus get out of the picture. That's why my follow-up post might attract some new participants, because it's back at the top.
4/ If you would have created some Java practice tests for one (or more) of the certification exams, you would probably already have reached your target, because there's a huge demand for such tests. Although the lack of explanation of the wrong answers could again decrease popularity and participation, because it's not really a Java practice test. You can only practice if you know what you did wrong.

What to do?
1/ You announced in one of your previous posts to have a random drawing for a $100 gift card. But it didn't get a follow-up. So maybe that could be an option. Then people could get something in return for their (time) investment. (I can add the drawing and its conditions to your first post)
2/ Make sure people get a 3rd email for each taken survey with an overview of their incorrectly answered questions together with the correct answers. So people can learn from it (another return for their investment).

Hope it helps!
Kind regards,
Roel

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

I only did the first three and then stopped because I got bored. Which means Roel and I are the only people for test #3.

Where else did you advertise this besides this post? Maybe send it to schools to get more participants?

[Rob Schipull]

Noel,

Thanks for the feedback. Very helpful!

Roel De Nijs wrote:

What to do?
1/ You announced in one of your previous posts to have a random drawing for a $100 gift card. But it didn't get a follow-up. So maybe that could be an option. Then people could get something in return for their (time) investment. (I can add the drawing and its conditions to your first post)

I will put together the follow up email that had the details of the random drawing for the gift card and make a follow up post on this thread either today or tomorrow.

rob

[Roel De Nijs]

Rob Schipull wrote:Noel,

It's a little bit early for Christmas

Rob Schipull wrote:I will put together the follow up email that had the details of the random drawing for the gift card and make a follow up post on this thread either today or tomorrow.

Awesome!

[Rob Schipull]

Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:
Where else did you advertise this besides this post? Maybe send it to schools to get more participants?

Hello Jeanne,

We posted on about 10 different Java LinkedIn groups, reached out to about 10 different Local US based Java user groups (1 was actually in Hong Kong), there were about 3 other Java forums similar to coderanch, and I made a post on reddit.com. I have not gone back and added in the drawing component to the LinkedIn groups, but I plan to after I vet it out here, since you guys have been so helpful. We plan on reaching out to university professors as well here in the next week or so.

rob

[Rob Schipull]

Roel De Nijs wrote:

Rob Schipull wrote:Noel,

It's a little bit early for Christmas

Roel,

Wow, my apologies for the name misspelling. One of my friends from high school was named Noel so I guess I was just used to typing that instead of "Roel". Sorry about that

Still drafting the rules for the drawing. Sorry for the delay.

rob

[Roel De Nijs]

Rob Schipull wrote:Wow, my apologies for the name misspelling. One of my friends from high school was named Noel so I guess I was just used to typing that instead of "Roel". Sorry about that

No problem at all! Although both names look very similar, I think they are pronounced very differently. I assume Noel is pronounced exactly like the one and only Noel Gallagher. But my name is pronounced exactly like "rule"

[Rob Schipull]

Here are the rules I came up with for the Gift Card drawing. Let me know if I'm missing anything, or if there are any questions.

1. No purchase is necessary to qualify for the drawing
2. You must be 18 years of age to enter
3. Only 1 entry per person
4. A Field Test will close once 250-400 completed tests have been received. If you start the survey and wait for a week and 250 other individuals complete the survey, you will not qualify for that particular test. Again, it's when 250 completed surveys have been received, not the first 250 to sign up.
A drawing is done once 2 Field Tests close. You get credit for each completed Field test. IE if you complete 2 Field Tests then you get 2 entries in the drawing
5. Your completed test must fall within a range of 15-45 min. to qualify. This rule is included to dissuade folks just randomly answering questions to get credit for completing a survey
6. If a winner cannot be reached a new winner will be randomly selected
7. All answers to the tests become property of testcodeskills.com
8. Sponsor reserves the right at its sole discretion to cancel, terminate, modify or suspend the drawing. Only reason for doing this is if we can't hit our 250-400 number in a reasonable time frame

Prizes: Three $100 Amazon Gift Cards ($100 drawing done when 2 surveys have been closed). Winners will be contacted by the email address that has been used to sign up for the test. Reminder: We do not use your email address for marketing, solicitation, or purposes of spam

rob

[Roel De Nijs]

Rob Schipull wrote:Here are the rules I came up with for the Gift Card drawing.

I updated the subject of this topic (to mention the possibility to win a gift card) and I also edited the first post of this thread to add a note about the gift card drawing with a link to your previous post (about the rules of the gift card drawing). Hope that's ok with you!

[Rob Schipull]

Roel De Nijs wrote:
I updated the subject of this topic (to mention the possibility to win a gift card) and I also edited the first post of this thread to add a note about the gift card drawing with a link to your previous post (about the rules of the gift card drawing). Hope that's ok with you!

Roel,

Thanks for updating my original post with the new info. about the $100 drawing. I've definitely seen an increase in traffic today as a result.

I'll also put the rules for the drawing on the testcodeskills.com site so folks have that available there as well. I also plan on adding a FAQ section on the testcodeskills.com site that encompass a lot of the great questions that were asked on this forum so potential test takers have that info. easily accessible.

rob

[Roel De Nijs]

Rob Schipull wrote:Thanks for updating my original post with the new info. about the $100 drawing. I've definitely seen an increase in traffic today as a result.

Glad to see your efforts are paying off. Hopefully this increase continues on the long term.

[Tim Cooke]

I spent a bit of time yesterday and completed all 6 question packs. I scored equally terrible in each of them, but never mind

[Rob Schipull]

Tim Cooke wrote:I spent a bit of time yesterday and completed all 6 question packs. I scored equally terrible in each of them, but never mind

Tim,

Thanks for taking the time to go through all 6 Field Tests. Actually, your scores were quite good when compared to the mean. More importantly, for us, I took a look at your score distributions across the 6 field tests and they were very consistent, which is exactly what we were hoping to see. If that doesn't cheer you up, then just think you now have 6 opportunities to win $300 (2 entries for each $100 drawing)

rob

[Rob Schipull]

Roel De Nijs wrote:Glad to see your efforts are paying off. Hopefully this increase continues on the long term.

Roel,

Your feedback was invaluable.

My plan is to update the testcodeskills.com site today with the $100 gift card drawing and then repost on LinkedIn and some other sites. I think the monetary addition should really drive up our response rates pretty quickly. So all you coderanch folks out there make sure you complete the Field Tests before we reach our 250-400 response limit. Also, any and all feedback is welcome. Thanks again everyone.

rob

[Roel De Nijs]

Rob Schipull wrote:If that doesn't cheer you up, then just think you now have 6 opportunities to win $300 (2 entries for each $100 drawing)

Can someone be the winner of more than one drawing? Because I don't think that's clearly mentioned in the rules. So will you be excluded for any other drawings if you are the winner in the first (or second) drawing. Based on this comment, I'm inclined to say: if you are really very lucky, you could win all 3 drawings and you could go crazy on Amazon.com

[Rob Schipull]

Roel De Nijs wrote:Can someone be the winner of more than one drawing? Because I don't think that's clearly mentioned in the rules. So will you be excluded for any other drawings if you are the winner in the first (or second) drawing. Based on this comment, I'm inclined to say: if you are really very lucky, you could win all 3 drawings and you could go crazy on Amazon.com

Roel,

Yes, you are correct. If you ended up being really lucky you could potentially win all three and go bonkers on Amazon. The statistical probability of that happening are pretty remote, but not impossible.

rob

[Roel De Nijs]

Rob Schipull wrote:If you ended up being really lucky you could potentially win all three and go bonkers on Amazon. The statistical probability of that happening are pretty remote, but not impossible.

Time to start collecting as many four-leaf clovers as possible

[Tim Cooke]

If the amount of outrageously unlikely things that happen in our software systems every day is anything to go by: I'm filling my Amazon basket now.

[Rob Schipull]

Tim Cooke wrote:If the amount of outrageously unlikely things that happen in our software systems every day is anything to go by: I'm filling my Amazon basket now.

You've got that right Tim

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

I took exam 6 to time how long it took me if I was trying to blow through it. The answer was 8 minutes to get 66%. I probably would have done marginally better had I been shooting for being fast. (And I was trying to participate in the context, I could have just done something else for 10 minutes and then pressed submit.) Why it didn't take 15 minutes:

A good number of questions are repated across exams so I've seen them

Some questions aren't much reading

I spend a lot of time looking at (and writing) mock questions

I've always taken exams quickly and finish in about the expected time

Also, “Synchromized” is spelled wrong

[Rob Schipull]

Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:I took exam 6 to time how long it took me if I was trying to blow through it. The answer was 8 minutes to get 66%. I probably would have done marginally better had I been shooting for being fast. (And I was trying to participate in the context, I could have just done something else for 10 minutes and then pressed submit.) Why it didn't take 15 minutes:

A good number of questions are repated across exams so I've seen them

Some questions aren't much reading

I spend a lot of time looking at (and writing) mock questions

I've always taken exams quickly and finish in about the expected time

Also, “Synchromized” is spelled wrong

Jeanne,

Thanks for the feedback. You bring up some great points. Individuals who have taken more than one Field Test, as you point out, will move through the tests quicker, due to seeing repeated questions. We will definitely take that into account, and do NOT plan on penalizing anyone who is a quick test taker. We will have enough response data, to test against the mean, to easily identify responses that are just random guesses. Those random guess entries will be eliminated from the drawing vs. the quick test takers.

Thanks for pointing out the misspelled word. That has been corrected. Looks like we may need to recruit you and Roel in our next round of question authoring, if you guys have any interest.

thanks again,

rob