Toms Liepins

So what is it like living in Latvia?

I guess nowadays that's like living in any other place in Europe. Much has changed in the last 14 years

Do you have McDonalds, Starbucks, and Walmart?

Ronald McDonald has been with us for the 7nth year. We do not have Starbucks yet, nor Walmart, altough we have a couple of cafe chains which are extremely similar to Starbucks (wireless internet, etc.)

By the way, how much money are they offering?

I guess that most people would be very happy to work for $20K a year. From the other point of view, everything is very cheap. I don't know very much about prices in USA, but until recently one was able to have his hair cut for some $4. However, prices (and wages) have been rising significantly in the last couple of years.
[ February 01, 2005: Message edited by: Toms Liepins ]

Hi,

Many are complaining about shortage of Java jobs, in my country - somewhere in Europe - that's exactly the opposite. Online recruitment agencies have loads of offerings, (one recruiter even hunted me a couple of days before I agreed that I would consider applying for one of the positions offered) In the last couple of months I have seen many advertisements for training programs: in essence, one has to attend a 2-week to 2-month Java training program, with prospects of full-time employment if the program is completed succesfully. Some companies (Accenture, some smaller ones) even pay for attending the program. Is this the practice in other parts of the world? We have expierenced a major surge in number of Java jobs here, maybe that's why companies are looking for innovative ways to attract prospective employees?

Well, it simply depends on the type of job you're applying to. If you go for Senior System Architect position, then it makes no sense to admit that your're a follower... But I would think about the question twice if a junior position was offered.

Well, Ukraine is a very good choice. In fact, my former employer used to outsource some of the most complex programming work to Ukraine. That project failed for several reasons, miscommunications being just one, but I hear that more and more companies choose Ukranians nowadays. However, Ukraine (IT sector) lacks serious government backing, at least that's what I can perceive from a distance. IT-related education is not very prestigous there, and the major drawback is the telecommunication network. If you need to connect to internet via ancient analog Russian-made telephone line, then you're just out of luck... Any other choices other than Ukraine?

Hi all,

I would like your opinion on which countries will be the next leaders in IT&T. Clearly, USA has lost most of it's entry-level IT positions, as it is more effective to do that in India (Bangalore, etc). As we all know, there are many thousands of highly educated, English speaking Indians there, who are happy to work for a significantly lower salary than an average programmer in the States. However, 'life is random', as the new ad by Apple states, and sooner or later there will be other leaders. So my question is, which country/region will be the leader after India loses it's significance? Appearantly, not China: the labour cost there is very low, as is English literacy level and the number of computers. What do you think about Eastern Europe? Baltic's region, Poland & friends?

There have been a couple of occasions where I have acted just like you - omitting some part of my expierene because that was not relevant to the job. At least, it's a lot better than stating that you have experience when in fact you don't have it

Thanks, Geoffrey, Marc, Jeffrey for your opinion on this. I'd choose Jeffreys answer I were not afraid that HR manager could spot that a candidate feels extremely comfortable answering this kind of question.

Hello folks,

I have a problem (sic!). There is this resume form with a question "why do you want to change job" on it. How should I answer this? The real answer is that my current employer is terminating all activities in the country, and therefore I'll soon be in problems. Another answer is that I have learned Java for quite some time (3yrs everyday expierence, a high score in SCJP, etc), just to switch from those scripting (aka PHP) languages to something more serious and exciting. BUT.. It's obvious that I can't write that I am applying because of the financial problems in my company, and I'm not that sure about my second point either. Any advices?

Hi Jay, I used mock exams from the list at JavaRanch. I think that Dan's exams are the best for learning. Aslo, Bill Brogden's exam was of decent quality, and of course, tests by Marcus Green. The quality of other mocks varied, some of them containted questions in really bad English, but were thought-provoking, some were just copies of Marcus exams
[ November 24, 2004: Message edited by: Toms Liepins ]

I'd like to share my expierence while preparing for SCJP 1.4. I started to prepare for the exam almost one year ago. Today was a great day because I passed with 95% (58 correct out of 61). The result was a bit on the high side of my expectations, however I had decided that I could score in 80-90% range. I did almost all mock exams that were available, and found those by Dan Chrisholm the most helpful for preparation. I spent most of the preparation time doing a couple of mocks now and then, however in the last month before exam I attempted almost all mock exams that were available. I was very afraid to fail the exam, as 150$ means quite a lot here where I live, but everything went just fine.

1)Those things I would like other test takers to know:
You will need to do a lot of mocks. Always write down the name/url of exam,
time started/finished, your answers, percentage and a short explanation of what went wrong in case of error. It's important to realize that in the real exam you won't have unlimited time, so writing down the time spent on a mock exam is essential.

2)Try compiling the programs you have doubts about, write a lot of small test cases.

3)You are ready if you can score at least 70% on any Dan's mock exam, and it's easy for you to answer (almost) all questions asked here at JavaRanch.

I did not participate in many JavaRanch discussions here, but I spent the last 2 months following the discussions / reading questions and answers. JavaRanch community was really helful and extremely nice. Thank you all for your support!

Good Morning Jerry,
You should read the JLS for more information on declaring arrays. Maybe the following list will help, i used that myself when learning about arrays:

int[] a = new int[]{3,3}; // OK int[][] b = {new int[4],{3}}; // OK int[] c = new int[]; // won't compile int[ ][ ] d = new int[3][]; // OK int[] e[],f[] = {{3}}; // OK int[] g[],[]h = {{3}}; // won't compile

Hi,
Arrays are actually Objects in Java. In fact, you can even do this:
int[] i=new int[10]; Object c=i;
The code above will make compiler happy. That's the case for C. As for E, here you have a multidimensional array (array of arrays). Hence, c[1] is a reference to another array. Note that you can't return c[1][0], as this would return a primitive.

I would suggest to re-read a chapter on Java fundamentals (arrays), I'm sure K&B book has some decent info on this.

Hi,
Could you please explain what you mean with "since there is nothing like a 'booleanValue'". I'm afraid I don't get that one

Line 5 is absolutely legal - you call the booleanValue() function on Boolean object (this function returns boolean primitive), and then you assign the return value to another boolean primitive b2.

You might want to look up the Boolean class in Java API Docs for more info on booleanValue() function.

Hi,
The sytem will only provide the default constructor if there are no constructors defined in your class. In your example, you have declared a constructor "Cons", therefore the default constructor won't be added. (Please note, that "Cons" is not called a default constructor, you have explictly declared it). Hope that helps.

Boolean b1 = Boolean.valueOf("trUE"); // 1 Boolean b2 = Boolean.valueOf("Even more true"); // 2 Boolean b3 = Boolean.valueOf(null); // 3 System.out.print(b1 + ","); System.out.print(b2 + ","); System.out.println(b3); System.out.print((b1==b2) + ","); System.out.print((b2==b3) + ","); System.out.println(b3==b1);

How comes that b2==b3 is true? Aren't both of them references to distinct Boolean objects?