John Carlos

Thanks everyone!  I have celebrated my victory.  Also received the OCP Boyarsky/Selikoff book and tomorrow I start the next step in this journey.

Paul Anilprem wrote:Congratulations, John! Good score!!
We are glad to know that our material was helpful in your preparation

-Paul.

Enthuware was great.  Definitely recommend, and will use it for OCPJP.

Score: 86%

I studied for 8 months.  I don't know if that is a lot, but I'm a busy person:  full-time job, one hour commute each way, and a child.  So that's how long it took me.

I used Enthuware and Boyarsky/Selikoff Study Guide and Practice Book

My Enthuware results were(chronological):

Test 1: 60%
Test 2: 69%
Test 3: 64%
Test 4: 80%
Test 5: 61%
Test 6: 76%
Test 7: 73%
Test 1: 87%
Test 2: 91%
Test 3: 83%
Test 4: 91%
Last Day Test : 79%

Lessons learned:
- Make an appointment early:  The center in my area only gives the exam 3 times per month, and it was pre-booked for an entire month.

- Speed: When I practiced the exam, I didn't time myself.  A busy life means it's impossible for me to sit down for 2.5 hours and practice.  I did my practice tests here and there, sections at a time.  My family would distract me and the Enthware timer would always run out, of course.  I didn't know you really need to be moving pretty quickly.  When I was one-third complete I checked the time and realized I had less than 2 minutes per question and I started to seriously panic.  I had to "use the force" on questions, meaning, I was not being thorough and it was quite uncomfortable considering the exam is deliberatly misleading and every question should be double-checked.

- When my work performance review came around, I added this certification to my goals for the year.  After doing that I realized that I could actually study a little bit at work.  Sweet!  On the flip side, it also meant that my boss knew I when I was going to take my test and that's where the source of my panic came from halfway through the exam.  I started having terrible thoughts that I wasn't going to pass and everyone knew I studied for 8 long months, and *still* didn't pass.  Geez.  It was a horrible feeling, and distracting.  I probably won't do that for OCPJP.  I'd rather be discrete.  If I fail, I can take it again without everybody knowing.

- Best advice:  Don't read the book too quickly.  Type up and compile all the examples.  Be sure to understand it all before moving on.  Be patient.  Use flashcards for review/Enthuware questions you get wrong. I read through the book once, without taking notes.  It was fine at first, but halfway through it started feeling daunting and I regretted it.  The second time I read it I did take notes, but I didn't like looking at my handwriting(not nearly as pleasant as printed text).  I read it a third time and I used flashcards.  I think that was the key because once I was done studying, the idea of using 2.5 hours of my life and taking another practice test for review repulsed me.  But I whipped out flashcards and went over them twice the morning of the exam.

- If you make flash cards, be sure to change the class and variable names so you don't recognize answers when you re-take a practice test

- Taking the test:  See if the answer has "Does not compile" or "None of the above".  If so, scan for compiler errors before wasting time calculating tricky nested loops and such.

I've been to a Maker Faire in Northern California.  It was fantastic.  I kept thinking, "This is what a fair is supposed to be!".  Rather than hot dogs and cheap carnival rides, there's much creativity, invention, art, inspiration, and things to learn.  So cool.

Thanks.  I'm still learning how to parse the questions for this exam.  Sometimes I know the answer but pick the wrong one because my brain interprets the question differently.  I can even see the double-sided nature of a question(real or invented creatively by my mind) and recognize that I'm trying to determine the intention of the writer, but I get that wrong.  I've already resolved I'm going to get a certain percentage incorrect this way and that's just life.

Seems to me Chapt 4 Question #16, on page 53 has two correct answers but only one to choose from.

The question is which line of code causes an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException?

String matrix[][] = new String[1][2]; matrix[1][0] = "Is all around you "; matrix[1][1] = "Why oh why didn't I take the BLUE pill?";
The answer says Option C is correct, that [1][0] is out of bounds.  But D is also correct in that [1][1] is out of bounds and throws an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException too.  The first dimension is one one element long, so it has to be index 0.  There are no two index 1's there, as there are no spoons.

It's interesting your exam score is higher than your enthuware average.  I'm studying and using enthuware too.  Did the exam seem easier than practice tests, or was it final preparations that boosted your score?

I spend 1.5 hours a day driving to and from work.  And I struggled with this as well.  I gave up trying to make that time useful as far as learning technology goes.  It's difficult to find a niche topic like that and be interesting.  I finally gave up and switched to just listening to normal literature audiobooks.  I'm surprised how much I like it and how it makes me feel productive.  Having read dozens of books now, I feel like a more accomplished person.  By picking worthwhile books, they change how you see the world, and that's every bit as important as learning a programming language.

Liutauras Vilda wrote:How much do you bet? It may or may not be.
Did you use some Kelly criterion to estimate your chances?

I think a cup of coffee wager would be apropos.
No maths.  Sheer positive thinking.  And it's already in "Best of this Month".  It's working!

Daniel Cox wrote:For reference purposes, the example John is referring to is Example 15.12.4.1-2. Evaluation Order During Method Invocation

Thanks again, Daniel.  I looked for an anchor tag but didn't find one.

Simply because... it's a newer year than the last "Best of the Year".

Daniel Cox wrote: According to the JLS

Thanks Daniel for linking this document.  I didn't really understand the run time blurb when I read it(and franky, I'm still not sure I do).  But there's an example on that page and I'll paste in the explanation in case anyone else comes across this thread looking for the answer...

I've edited the method and variable names to match my question:

The occurrence of str1 before ".equals" is evaluated first, before the argument expression str1 = str2. Therefore, a reference to the string "one" is remembered as the target reference before the local variable str1 is changed to refer to the string "two". As a result, the equals method is invoked for target object "one" with argument "two", so the result of the invocation is false.

Norm Radder wrote:
Have you looked at the generated code to see what order the byte-code statements are executed?

No.  What is this dark magic you speak of?  (Translation: how do I do that?)

I came across this and it is throwing me off:
       String str1 = "one";        String str2 = "two";        System.out.println( str1.equals( str1=str2 ) ); Prints false.  But I dont understand why.  By the time str1.equals( ... ) is called, str1 is pointing to the equivalent string in the pool.

Thank you Enthuware for this puzzler!

We should all learn to speak well, it helps you in any job.  You speak to your manager.  You speak to your team.  If you're Scrum, you have lots of meetings(*ahem*) and need to speak often.  Toastmasters is probably the number 1 thing I did for myself that has helped me the most professionally.  If I knew I was going to have to talk some time during the week, like give a demo to a group of people, I was so full of anxiety the night before that I would not sleep.  It was that bad.  I'd lay in bed the entire night, awake.

So what's it like now?  Yea, I used to be the shy programmer who only wanted to talk to computers.  But then in job meetings, I appeared to be disengaged.  That's not what most employers want, at all.  Now things are reversed.  I speak often, my managers think it's great.  I'm engaged and now seen as more of a leader.  How awesome is that?  Get comfortable speaking!  It's the best thing you can do.  I recommend Toastmasters to anyone whenever I get the chance.

And now I love talking.  It's changed my personal life.  I didn't know how much I would enjoy public speaking.  I never miss an opportunity.