SCJP Resources

There is a large number of resources both online and offline available for SCJP exam preparation. Not all of them are effective, particularly if you have limited time to spare, like me. The following are the short-listed resources I have used to pass the SCJP exam(31st october,2004). I got 56 answers right out of 61 questions and scored 91% . It took 3 weeks for me to learn the fundamentals of Java language and specifically prepare for the exam. If you have limited time, the following list of resources, which I consider very effective, may help you too.

Books

• “HeadFirst Java” by Bert Bates, Kathy Sierra - If you are new to Java, this is the best book, as it explains the concepts in a very humorously engaging way. And this book has a variety of presentation techniques to illustrate and emphasize the concepts.
• “Sun Certified Programmer & Developer for Java 2 Study Guide” by Bert Bates, Kathy Sierra - This book covers every thing required for the exam in the same style as in “HeadFirst Java” and the question set included is very close to the real exam both in content and format.

Mock Exams

• Mock exams included on the CD with the book “Sun Certified Programmer & Developer for Java 2 Study Guide”. Mostly the same questions as in the text book.
• Java Programmer Certification Mock Exam by Marcus Green (http://www.jchq.net/phezam/login.php).
  These questions are very close to the real exam both in content and format.
• Bill Brogden Collection (http://www.wbrogden.com/exams/index.html). 1. The Old hardest test collection 2. The new book test. These questions highlight a few very interesting concepts, which otherwise go unnoticed. Some of the questions in (a) are also be repeated in (b).

Other online resources

• Sun Java Online Tutorial in HTML Help- for reference whenever required. It will be very handy to have it in this format. http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/information/download.html
  
• JavaRanch SCJP FAQ Pages (http://www.javaranch.com/certfaq.jsp). This is the web page where I found most of the resources for the exam. I used the following from this page along with the mock exams (b and c) listed above: 1. Potential Trips/Traps in SCJP Exam by Ajith Kallambella. and 2. Ashraf Fouad's concentrated guide to SCJP- Good compilation from different certification resources. Careful, the wording is confusing at times and not all chapters are relevant for the exam.
• Xinox Software‘s JCreator IDE (http://www.jcreator.com/download.htm ) Free version available and is written entirely in C++, so very fast and better for testing samples. Can easily navigate through API and Java documentation from within this application.

My 2 cents

• Remember the nature of the few exceptions that you come across during the preparation, whether they are checked exceptions or not. If a checked exception appears in the question, check for code to handle it or declare it.
• If ‘Compilation fails’ is in the options list, then first go through the code to see for compilation errors. When you are taking final mock tests before the real exam, do not take tests by test objective (particularly tests on the CD include hint to the test objective). If you maneuver the mock exams, you will be in a better position to identify what is being tested in the question, though it looks to test something else.
• String and Wrapper classes are final classes and immutable.
• Thread class implements Runnable interface, so can be passed as a Runnable target to other threads.
• In Java, the remainder operator works with decimal numbers too unlike C++. The value of 15.07%3.01 will be 0.02, NOT ZERO.
• The Math.random () function never returns 1.0. (Always returns value less than 1.0)