Finished Sybex OCA book

[travis thompson]

Followup from this post:
https://coderanch.com/t/671247/certification/Starting-Sybex-OCA-book#3137760

This is the first programming book I've read. I really enjoyed reading it. The analogies with animals and stuff were cute. I scored about 60% on each practice test for each of the six chapters.

I'm studying for this OCA 8 certification. I have until March to obtain the cert.

I want to make actual programs for my IT job. I've been looking into JavaFX, maven, and other languages.

I would like another book to read. Any recommendations?


Thanks,
Travis

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Travis,
Glad to here you liked the animals!  In terms of studying for the OCA, I'd recommend doing the end of chapter tests another couple times. They are designed to be taken multiple times to reinforce the concepts and prepare you for the test.

For Maven, I recommend better builds with Maven. It's an old book (covers Maven 2 not 3), but it is really good! I also recommend you learn JDBC or JPA. Many programs involve a database.

[Roel De Nijs]

travis thompson wrote:I would like another book to read. Any recommendations?

In the OcajpFaq (besides other very useful information) and this thread you'll find an overview of all available (free and commercial) resources (study guides, mock exams, video courses,...) to thorougly prepare yourself for the certification exam. And on the OcajpWallOfFame you'll find plenty of (links to) experiences from other ranchers (including resources they have used). So it can be useful to determine which resources are useful (and which are not).

If you use the search function, you'll find plenty of topics with advice to prepare (and ace) the OCA exam. Here are a few:

Studying so hard just to fail(1z0-808)

Failing Java SE 8 Programmer I

Bad Experience with OCA 7 exams

Any tricks about how to manage the 120 min for so many question?

second failed OCAJP

Need some advice after failing the exam

Hope it helps!
Kind regards,
Roel

[travis thompson]

Wow I wasn't expecting the author to respond! Hi~  I think I will go back and really look into those chapter review tests in detail. Though I only got 60%, I learned a lot. I'll shoot for higher scores.

Better builds with Maven - great I'll look into that. I guess I just need a project. We work a lot with Powershell at my job. I'm thinking about making a Java program that somehow interfaces with that.

I hacked this program together in one night after reading this book. This is one of my first programs ever, be gentle:

https://github.com/tr4v1sty/TriageRotator

It cycles through a list of people and keeps track of tasks given. It asks to add/remove people to the list when you first run it. I made it with IntelliJ, compiled it into a JAR. Learned a lot doing that! Wouldn't have been able to write this before reading the book, for sure!