R.J. Arzki

Jan de Boer wrote:If you think that all software problems should be solved by that one tool and programming language you know best, ...


I mean this: I once had a colleague who did everything in Delphi what could have be done far more easily in e.g. a shell script. But he knew Delphi, so everything was solved with calling a little Delphi exe. Calling a Delphi console exe to copy some files to a certain location, stuff like that.

This is exactly the one I wanted to write as well Now I have to thing of another one.

1) ... you've never rewritten your code just because you found out there is a better way of doing it...
2) ... you never fixed bugs on production using vim, while waiting for the official hot-fix to go live...

I think the best way to prepare for the exam is to read other people's stories here: https://coderanch.com/wiki/659980/Ocajp-Wall-Fame

This way you can see what sources everyone else used: books, software, mock-up exams, etc.

My particular one is this: https://coderanch.com/t/692163/certification/Passed-OCAJP


Good luck!

Even though I had experience with Java and IDE's, when I took my OCAJP exam, I went back to classical editors (VSCode without any java plugin enabled), command line and javac/java commands. This was an invaluable help in understanding some of the things an IDE is usually hides from me (like classpaths and package dependencies).

However, I was still using an IDE for the purpose of studding the JDK itself. I've looked at a lot of code from common java classes (like LocalDateTime for example). This helped a lot in understanding how the actual JDK works. To be honest I've enjoyed studying the design of the classes itself. See all the method implementations, the different constructors... etc. Sure, I could have looked all this information up on the official JDK documentation page online, but it felt more natural and easy doing it in an IDE.

just my 2 cents on the subject.

Thank you for the tips, I will try them.

P.S. I have really enjoyed your book "Java in a Nutshell" 6th Edition. I've read it several times while I was studying for the OCAJ8, and it will be a good reference for a long time to come.

Thank you for your reply and hints. I do indeed use a 3rd party tool, namely Pentaho Data Integration. Although some of the code is written by me, the actual mechanics of the tool are out of my hands. I only relay on suggested setting in the manual. But I usually like to get my hands dirty and would feel much better if everything would be under my control

At any rate, I look forward reading your book. Optimizing Java, any aspect of it, is always welcome and a good skill to have.

Thank you.

Hi,

I am wondering if this book will help me tune long running java processes (get rid of our-of-memory issues). More specifically, I am interested in JVM tuning, when I am not in control of the actual java code running.

Thanks.

Good to see you here.
Welcome.

Campbell Ritchie wrote:40 hours is a lot. Does that affect the rest of your life?
I have seen the book and it doesn't make any assumptions about how you study.

Yes, 40h/week was a lot. But I pushed myself in the last month so that I don't have to postpone the exam (it was already pre-booked). It did affect my private life, but not that much. My wife was very supportive. The result was success, but I was totally burned out afterwards. The vacation I had was a welcomed change

Hi,

I see that your latest book still covers Java 8. yes, the OCP exam is still covering that topic, but I guess in the near future they will jump to a higher version. Are you not afraid that the book will soon become obsolete? Do you have any inside information from Oracle regarding certification version coverage?

Thanks.

Hi,

I am glad you are releasing this book now, as I will soon embark on my journey to obtain OCP.

I've recently got my OCA certification and my study rhythm wasn't optimal. I've started slow (8-10 hours a week) but after 1-2 month I've realized it's not enough. So I've started to push myself, and I've ended up studying ~40h pe week in the last month before the exam. What would you consider a normal study rhythm, and does the book help you keep up with it?

Thanks.

Welcome.

I am looking forward to read the book and study for the OCP.

cheers.

Awesome. Thank you!

Hi Bill,

Yes, I refer to the Kafka topic as Queue.

We are doing commit to the Kafka in several ways (commit interval as well as count of retrieved messages). But it's actually not enough for our specific needs. The Kafka consumer doesn't have control over the final destination of the messages. So if the process is broken in between than some of the messages that have been read (and committed) by the consumer are not yet delivered to the specific container.

But I am glad to know that the option we chose is the right one.

cheers.

Hi Bill,

I am wondering if you can give us some recommendation, or best practices related to queue seek in Kafka.
Assuming we have a system that reads messages from the Queue and then independently transports them to a container. If the process fails in between, and we already committed the read from the queue what would be the best option to pick up the queue reader where it left off?  Currently we are storing the offset and partition of the messages that have already been transported to the container, and when the reader starts, we are always seeking to the last known partition/offset combo. Is there a better or more optimal way of doing this?

Thanks.