posted 6 years ago
Hey guys,
I've just passed 1Z0-808 with 65%. It was my second attempt, 2 weeks ago I got 55%...
I don't want to repeat the obvious about the enthuware.com practice exams and the Boyarski and Selikoff OCA book. These resources are great and you don't even want to think about ignoring them.
But let me mention a couple of things that helped me a lot.
As a complete beginner, with 0 background in coding I found it vital to do an online course before the book. I picked Tim Buchalka's course on Udemy and completed 20% of it before the book. Without it i would've struggled lot more at the beginning. It helped a lot to be able to imagine and understand the whole concept, to practice the basic and to write some code.
Than I read through the book 3-4 times, did the review questions, etc.
I scored between 50-65% on the enthuware mock exams, the last day one was 57%, before my first attempt.
After I failed, I read through the book again and practised the object wise tests on enthuware.
Also, I bought the official mock exam for £100. Its not bad, helps you to sustain your confidence, but its not very necessary.
About the exam: i would say it is easier then the enthuware questions and a bit harder then the official transcender mock exam. There were a lot of questions on constructors (calling default constructors, etc), exception (try-catch-catch without finally), 3-4 lambda, etc.
As a complete beginner, the preparation took me quite a while.. I spent 3-4 months watching the online tutorials. It wasn't intense, wasn't more then 2 hours a week in average. But the last 5 weeks was painful.. I studied every single day 6-8 hours, but a bit less when i had to go to work.
All in all it wasn't easy, but if you are determined enough, you can do it, even if you didn't touch a computer before.