Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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108 of 113 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best Java study guide available--highly recommended!!!, January 21, 2003
I had just passed the Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 1.4 Platform exam (with a score of 80%), and I want to help prospective test takers in finding the "right" Java study guide. I was bewildered by the number of books available, and I had to try many of them before I settled on the right one. Here are my short reviews for each of the major Java study guides:"Sun Certified Programmer & Developer for Java 2 Study Guide" by Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates (five stars): I felt this book was the best among all the Java study guides. Both the authors were responsible for the Java certification exam's development, and the practice questions are *very* similar to the actual exam. The authors also cover exactly what will be on the 1.4 exam, pointing out potential topics, questions, and pitfalls. I can't recommend this book highly enough. "A Programmer's Guide to Java Certification" by Khalid Mughal and Rolf Rasmussen (four stars): This is a good choice if you plan on taking the 1.2 exam. The book also has a dual purpose of teaching Java and sometimes goes beyond the actual scope of the exam, but it is nonetheless excellent. However, as the title suggests, this isn't the book for you if you don't have any programming experience. Also, the book's practice questions are much, much harder than the actual exam. "Complete Java 2 Certification Study Guide (3rd Edition)" by Philip Heller and Simon Roberts (two stars): This was the most disappointing book of all. I don't know why so many people swear by it, but the book appeared to have been rushed into production. Many of the errors and typos have been updated in the book's second printing, but the book's coverage of topics is quite weak. Lastly, the practice questions were not only too easy, but they don't look very similar to how questions look on the real test. It's not a terrible book (many people appear to have passed the exam with just this book), but there are better options. "Java 2 Exam Prep" by Bill Brodgen (three stars): This compact study guide isn't a bad choice for prospective test takers with a good Java foundation. It covers all the exam's topics succinctly, but as another reviewer noted, it should not be your primary study guide. I personally did not find the book particularly useful. Lastly, sign up for Sun's ePractice practice exams. You'll get three sample tests, and they will help you prepare for the exam by showing you how the questions will look and what type of questions they will ask. I didn't like the idea of spending the extra money, but the practice exams definitely helped me prepare for the real thing.
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77 of 79 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Definitely not enough to get 100%, September 5, 2004
I do strongly recommend this book for anyone willing to pass the SCJP exam,
even though, it is very important for you to know that it does not cover ALL
possible content you will find in the real exam, will cover most yes, but
not all. If you are newbie you would not notice (dangerous) but if you do have
experience, sometimes you will feel like going and find by yourself some
gaps in the book. If you are the kind go for all 100% getter I do strongly recommend
using additional study materials as complement and even more, use your favorite
development environment to test all gaps or questions you might find which are
not covered in the book.
Pros:
- The book covers nicely most of the exam objectives.
- It is a breeze to read it, I have even had friends asking me what was this
comedy about. I did really enjoy reading it. I did not find any bad jokes,
I think I would enjoy a party with the authors, we have the same sense of humor.
- The book is 100% reliable, perfectly accurate, if the content is in the book
it is right. As far as I can tell, I did not find one single question error or
wrong concept and I made all self tests in the book and I consider myself a
really meticulous guy (this is a MUST requirement for any study material, there
are many inaccurate books and preparation materials with flawed concepts). Not
studying or keeping your concepts from experience is even better than studying it
wrong, this book only does good. The authors gained my entire trust, I will look only
for them when looking for further Java certification books.
- After reading it I was EVEN able to spot few really flawed questions in my
third-party training software!!! this speaks by itself. They (third-party training
software support) were very surprised at that, I asked them how could I rely on a
training software with few flawed questions and their answer was "you are really
prepared, this proof you really master the concepts and that you are ready for the
test", thanks to this book.
Cons:
- Bear in mind there are (I would say) many uncovered concepts or topics related to the
exam, this book is not an exhaustive Java reference and some of the uncovered content
can easily appear in the test, these bellow are the kind of questions left unanswered/uncovered
that you would have to find out BY YOURSELF somewhere else and you might be surprised to
find in the exam e.g.
. What are Daemon type threads how they behave differently from non-daemon threads?
. Are static variables initialized as instance variables with default values?
. some exotic declarations e.g. can you tell about this one? "int[] a, b[];" here
you have an array and a matrix.
. Converting Octal/Hex/Binary/Decimal.
. Operators precedence!!!
. Are assertions considered as a return statement with the compiler
returning the kind of "line X is unreachable because of a previous assert false;"?
. Is there an inner classes nesting limit?
. How can you refer to the instance of the outmost class from the nested 2nd level
deep non-static inner class?
. Can methods return references to (method) locally declared inner classes, if so
how can that be referenced/used from outside? as Object?
. Possible valid access modifiers for (method) locally declared inner classes?
- The software included with the book is in my opinion very bad quality, not
the content of the questions (I never did any) but the applications, the
selftest software included with the book is a very small sized frame
no-resizable that you would have to scroll back and forth for reading
any question, extremelly annoying. Additionally the bonus stuff on internet
I could never download because of some errors in the pages, I finally gave
up about using it.
I had the SCJP 1.4 exam last friday 09/03/2004 passing with 95% and this was my
passing formula:
- I have more than 5 years experience programming in Java and C++.
- Reading this book. It took me one calendar week to go through the complete
book (SCJP part) with questions and everything. I am in holidays and invested
4 days for studying :-) on top of one weekend. Not to mention this book
was my pillow for this complete week. But you can reeeeally enjoy reading
it, I read most of it on Parade Platz, Movenpick, having Movenpick chocolate
ice creams, if you are Swiss you know what I am talking about ... the ice cream
helped a lot.
- I practiced mostly using SelfTest Software http://www.selftestsoftware.com
training to track my progress.
- I had already the Brainbench certification Master in Java 1 & 2,
http://www.brainbench.com. I recommend having the Brainbench Java 2
test or preparation before going to the SCJP. Brainbench has the toughest
tests I have ever experienced, if you can make it there you can make it anywhere!!!
But understand that Brainbench test objectives are much broader.
These are some nice statistics you can use as a reference, these are the results
of my preparation compared to the results in the actual exam, I think there is a
clear correlation:
SelfTest questions included in the book (I did each only once after reading the corresponding
chapter, does not make sense doing many times, the idea is not to memorize), however writing
what (and why) you did wrong is very useful to focus your studying efforts even further:
Chapter 1- Language Fundamentals 17/20 (85%)
Chapter 2- Declarations and Access Control 10/15 (66%)
Chapter 3- Operators and Assigments 17/18 (94%)
Chapter 4- Flow Control, Exceptions and Assertions 14/20 (70%)
Chapter 5- OO Overloading and Overriding ... 21/21 (100%)
Chapter 6- java.lang Math, Strings, Wrappers 15/19 (78%)
Chapter 7- Objects and Collections 12/15 (80%)
Chapter 8- Inner classes 8/12 (66%)
Chapter 9- Threads 18/21 (85%)
These are my overall results of doing simulation tests using third-party
SelfTest software during my studying of the book:
first try - 66% (without studying)
second try - 72%
third try - 85%
fourth try - 100%
These are my results in the actual exam overall passing 95%:
Language Fundamentals 90%
Declarations and Access control 100%
Operators and Assigments 87%
Flow Control, Assertions, and Exception Handling 100%
Overloading, Overriding, Runtime Type and OO 100%
Fundamental Classes in the java.lang package 100%
The Collections Framework 100%
Garbage Collection 100%
Threads 87%
One last note, do not cheat yourself, do not use BRAINDUMPS, try
instead to deeply understand all concepts. Additionally
the "serialization" mechanism for BD is not actually reliable,
I looked at those for curiousity and it was pure crap.
I hope you enjoy reading the book too, Good luck!
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70 of 73 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very clear and easy-to-read, up-to-date, December 18, 2002
I was on a beta review team for this book, and it was the book I wish I'd had when I was preparing for the exam. Things that were not made clear to me from other books were suddenly lightbulbs turning on. One of the authors was apparently on the team that actually CREATED the real Sun exam (at least the latest one, for 1.4, I think), so the topics and sample questions are exactly in line with what the real exam is like. There are a few new things (assertions) that were not on the exam when I took it, so I can't speak to how well those match the new exam, but from everything I can remember, this book is dead on.
The tone of the writing is very friendly, casual and informal. If you're looking for a computer science text book, this is not it. This book sounds like having the guy in the next cube sit down and talk to you about how things REALLY work, and if you don't get it he just keeps trying.
There were a few errors when we proof-read it, so hopefully these were all fixed, but they were mostly typos that did not hurt your ability to learn and prepare for the exam. Also, it does *not* cover material that is not on the exam. I happen to like this about it -- if I want to learn more and more about Java I'll read something else, thank you very much. My big concern when I was studying for the exam was to PASS THE FRICKIN THING. It makes it clear over and over that the book is about helping you get through the exam. Period.
But -- not everyone likes this approach, and if you want a more comprehensive (but very dry and textbook-like) discussion of Java overall, then you might want one of the other exam books.
I thought the two most helpful parts are the "Exam Tip" (or 'exam watch", something like that) highlights that point out traps or pitfalls or key things about the way a particular thing might be shown on the exam, and also the Two Minute Summary (which takes a lot more than two minutes) that is a list of the key bullet points from the chapter. The summary is a perfect thing for cramming. I would photocopy these and carry them around with me if I were preparing for the exam now.
And the mock/sample exam questions are very, very realistic. When I took the test, I had been studying with another book -- the Roberts and Heller book -- which was excellent, but the questions in that book did not prepare me completely for how shocking (hard) some of the *real* questions were on the exam.
I think it covers most of the topics in exactly the right level of detail, although there were a few areas where the explanations started from the very beginning, as though I'd never seen Java before. They didn't make too many assumptions about how much I already knew, so sometimes there will probably be parts you can skip over because you already know it, but it still moves all the way through to the advanced parts of the topic, small step by small step.
I'm a software developer with a long background in C, but I hadn't had much OO and Java when I first started trying to learn Java and get certified, and this would have been the best book for me. If I had been a Java guru already, or even a C++ guru, I might have wanted more overall Java rather than just the exam-specific info, but for me, this still would have been the best book to actually prepare for the taking the test. I scored an 81% on the exam, but I think with this book I would have done much better.
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