I was recently quizzed about prep for the Sun Certified Java Programmer exam, so here’s a quick rundown of the resources I found useful and tips I picked up when I was studying for SCJP 5. All in, it cost me around £200 and took just under four months. I can recommend the following resources:
- SCJP 5 Study Guide by Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates. Choose the book for the certification version you’re going for. Work through every chapter and make sure you understand every concept and gain some familiarity with the APIs. I found flash-cards (little cards, questions on one side, answers on the other) invaluable for really burning some of the more difficult to remember stuff. As I didn’t have a programming or Computer Science background, I learnt more about Object-Oriented concepts and programming in the first three chapters of this book than I did from anywhere else.
- javaranch.com SCJP FAQ for the latest thoughts info on certification, and the SCJP Certification Forum, in which you’ll start by asking questions and wind up answering the questions of others as you get lined up for the exam. The FAQ is also a good place to check what the recent exam takers are saying about the exam and the study materials. You can also use the Rules Roundups to get a feel for answering questions, although they’re pretty easy compared to the exam.
- Mock exams. When you think you’re nearly ready for the exam, grab a pack of mock tests (I used whizlabs). I certainly wasn’t as ready as I thought I was! Do them properly – set aside at least an hour and try and work as if under exam conditions – you also get used the format of the exams and there’s a few tricky corner cases in the mock exams I did that are worth knowing about.
- Sign up for your exam at prometric.com. I signed up for the exam as soon as I’d finished reading the Study Guide, because I’m fundamentally lazy and needed the impending deadline! If you do the same, you might want to give yourself a month or two between booking and exam day to do those mocks and deal with any gaps in your knowledge they throw up.
I’ve also got a couple of tips on techniques to use for answering some of the tricker exam questions – that can also come in useful when writing and debugging code.
First up, the exam will often have a code sample and ask you to choose from a number of options. ‘Does not Compile’ is almost always an option, and it kept catching me out at first. The way I dealt with it was to run through the sample twice – first as the compiler, looking for those errors that would prevent the code compiling in the first place. Only if that first check didn’t throw up any problems do you need to imagine the behaviour of the code as it runs and look for exceptions and results.
Second, come up with some way of sketching the changing references to objects as you work through a code sample. This’ll help you catch subtle re-assignments you might miss working it through mentally.
It’ll take up your time. I was probably spending about 5-10 hours a week learning, revising and writing code for those four months – that counts when you’re working full time. It’s worth it though, particularly if you’re an inexperienced Java programmer. It’ll make you aware of some of the principles and practises you should be thinking about and it’ll give you something of a guided tour of the core Java APIs.
If you going to go for this cert, good luck!
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