Passed Java 8 - OCAJP 1Z0-808 Exam with 92%

[Mario Biagioni]

Good morning!

I'm introducing myself: I'm Mario, I am from center of Italy, 34 years old and wednesday I passed the OCA-8 exam, so now I'm a Oracle Certificated Associate! I register here beache it was also because of you that I achieved that goal! I read a lot of topics and the joyness about passing the exam.

I started thinking about Java certifications years ago, when it was at version 7. So I started studing and creating my projects with Java since then. After that with my personal life made me stopped to study enough for that purpose, but last October I started with only one goal: achieve that certification.

I studied on a video course on Udemy, and I started to take some mock exams online. Years ago I bought the Enthuware mock exams for Java 7 and I started again with those questions. The results were not good... from 55% to a 78%. But for what I could see, there were a lot of tricks: variables visible only in part of code, static and instance variables, and so on. I concentrated on thoose aspects and last try was 81%! So I was pretty confident.

In the exam I was very very concentrate about thoose tricks and... now I'm here!

Now... By the end of the year I would like to try the OCP exam (yes, I have to study more). Which other certifications should I study for? C# (70-483 and the path to MCSA)? Android? This year I want it to be a year full of professional certifications!

[Pete Letkeman]

Welcome to CodeRanch Mario and congratulations on achieving that score.

When you get a few moments you add yourself to https://coderanch.com/wiki/659980/Ocajp-Wall-Fame

You mentioned that you were thinking on taking the Java OCP 809 exam.
I suggest that you take a few moments and read some of the stories found here https://coderanch.com/wiki/659976/Ocpjp-Wall-Fame.
By reading the stories you can see what resources others used and how they prepared. This could save you time, money and frustration.

As for what else to be certified in, well that is kind of tough to answer. Not all employers treat certifications the same. Some employers do not even care about certifications.
The question you should ask yourself is why are you getting certified?

If you are planning on exploring Android development then you may want to learning Kotlin https://kotlinlang.org/.
It's been predicted that many Android development jobs and shops will soon be favoring Kotlin over Java for Android development in the next year or two.

Once you are Java 809 OCP certified you may want to look at the J2EE certification path,
You may want to look into Oracle Database or some other database certification. Much of today's world uses databases for nearly everything.

You may also want to look into learning Java 9 which was released September 2017.
While there are no certifications for it yet, companies are and will start adopting Java 9 now or in the next few months.

[Daniele Barell]

Bravissimo Mario!  
Congratulations! It's the end of a very long road!

[Paul Anilprem]

Congratulations, Mario! Great score!!
Glad to know that our product was helpful in your preparation

[Mario Biagioni]

Thank you all for the support.

Well, when I started to think about certifications, I started to ask myself: why?
I have a job and I'm happy in my condition, but when some recruiters ask for my experience "so do you know 'blablabla'" my answer could be "yes", but how much do I really know?
The certification is a measure, not only for a employer, but for me too. I know and I want to know more, but as far as I know now I'm capable, as much as the certificator guarantee for me. And it's the motivation for learning something more and experience more.

I was thinking to the Oracle path too (I started to see the path, it begins with 1Z0-071), but the great idea is the J2EE path, Am I wrong or we should wait for Java 8-based J2EE certification path?

Thanks for the Kotlin idea! I'll think about that!

[Mario Biagioni]

Pete Letkeman wrote:You may also want to look into learning Java 9 which was released September 2017.
While there are no certifications for it yet, companies are and will start adopting Java 9 now or in the next few months.

Is your suggestion to start studying for 809 or waiting for the Java 9 certification path?

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Mario Biagioni wrote:

Pete Letkeman wrote:You may also want to look into learning Java 9 which was released September 2017.
While there are no certifications for it yet, companies are and will start adopting Java 9 now or in the next few months.

Is your suggestion to start studying for 809 or waiting for the Java 9 certification path?

Take the 809 for two reasons:

You have to take the same version of OCA and OCP to get certified.

There isn't going to be a Java 9 cert. Java 10 comes out in March. (and Java 11 in September.) The six month release cycle is too frequent for Oracle to update the cert each time. My guess is they will wait for Java 11 since that is a long term release, but they haven't said that yet. In any case, if there was going to be a Java 9 cert, it would have to be in beta by now.