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)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Newsworthy News in Red October : Dow Jones & Tax Dodgers

-
Dow Jones Index crosses the symbolic 10000 figure. U.S. stocks rallied, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average above 10,000 for the first time in a year, on better-than-estimated earnings at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Intel Corp. Bank of America Corp., American Express Co. and JPMorgan more than doubled since the Dow slid to a 12-year low on March 9 as global financial firms began recovering from $1.6 trillion in writedowns and credit losses. International Business Machines Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. jumped at least 54 percent since March 9 on signs the nation was recovering from the worst recession in seven decades. Source: Bloomberg And, about 7500 International Tax dodgers file for IRS Amnesty to avoid jail Some 7,500 international tax dodgers have applied for an amnesty program that promises no jail time and reduced penalties for tax cheats who come forward, the Internal Revenue Service announced Wednesday. … The program is part of a larger eff...
Read more

USCIS Selects Final H1B Petitions by Random Selection - Almost a 50% chance for each Application

-
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that on April 12 it conducted the computer-generated random selection process to determine which H-1B petitions, subject to the congressionally mandated H-1B cap for fiscal year 2008 (FY 2008), would continue to final processing. USCIS completed this determination ahead of the preliminary schedule noted on April 3, when it announced it had received enough petitions to meet the cap for FY 2008. The 123,480 cap-subject petitions received on April 2 and 3 were labeled with unique numerical identifiers and selected randomly by computer. The chosen numerical identifiers were then transmitted to the appropriate service center for further processing. Source: USCIS Announcement Number 123,480 looks a lot better keeping in view initial estimates. A good 50% chance for each application to be selected.  Update: 3rd May 2007 Hello friends, I understand your anxiety. But don’t loose your hope and/or temper yet. Please wai...
Read more

H1B 2008:USCIS released Preliminary Numbers

-
USCIS today released the final count of number of unique pieces of mail received for H1B petitions. It received 133,000 unique pieces of mail containing H-1B petitions. I guess, each piece of mail will ' mostly ' contain more than one petition, as no company would send each petition in a seperate package and its most unlikely that a firm applies for just one petition. Probably by the end of next week, we might know the actual number of H1B petitions filed and how lucky one must be to get through the initial filter. Source: USCIS Releases Preliminary Number of FY 2008 H-1B Cap Filings  (26KB PDF) 04/05/2007 During Monday and Tuesday, USCIS received 133,000 unique pieces of mail containing H-1B petitions. This is lower that the original USCIS estimate of 150,000. USCIS based the initial estimate on amounts from manifests received along with the mail. USCIS reached the updated number following a physical count of the mail. Each piece of mail may contain more than one H-1B pe...
Read more