Customer Reviews

Java 2 Certification Exam Guide for Programmers and Developers

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(30)

 

 

The Cover says it has hundreds of exam questions - which is true. What it doesn't say is that they're in a DEMO program which only delivers FIVE questions at a time. I'm very angry with the McGraw Hill for not being upfront about the CD contents. [price] was my already over my budget for a Java certification book.

I want my money back too.

Believe it or not I passed the exam, but with no thanks from these lazy money hungry bafoons that call themselves JAVA experts. Typos, missing text and in some cases erroneous conclusions. If you do not know JAVA you must NOT buy this book as it will lead you astray! If you do know JAVA, and someone is giving it to you for free it will save you (money) and give you some idea what will be covered on the exam....

The true test of the Java 2 Certification Exam Guide is to actually take the Java 2 Certification exam and see if you pass.

But that's something I'm not going to risk after reading this book.

While there's thoughtful treatment of many Java issues, from the mundane to the esoteric, the presentation of these issues suffers from errors in both substance and typography.

Consider chapter 2, Java Programming Essentials. As you read through the chapter, you manage to ignore the various typos, after all, you already know Java, you're just trying to study for the exam. (It's just annoying to have to put up with them.)

You work through the exercises, and get philosophical as the authors ask you a question about a method that isn't even defined in the code sample they present. Are you supposed to use your imagination? I don't think that'd be a good idea on the actual exam.

Finally, you get to the end of the chapter to check your answers. Chapter 2 has exercises numbered 1 through 17. But the answers are numbered 1 through 19 ... and the answer for 17 doesn't have anything to do with the question for 17! You toss the book down in disgust.

That's unfortunately representative of much of the rest of the book. It seems pretty clear that the authors, the editors, and the publisher were rushing to get this text out. More's the pity, the book had real potential, with a lot of breadth. Maybe these problems will go away in a second or third edition ... but maybe Java 3 will be out then, too!

This book contains so much errors that I cannot imagine how anyone can rely on this book to study for the Java Certified Programmer exam.

I have not come across any book as bad as this one. Don't waste your time and money on this book. Look elsewhere.

My company decided to move all of it's code to Java and as a consequence I was forced to become certified in Java to retain my job. I had already had some experience in Java. My company gave me the choice between this book and "Complete Java 2 Certification" by Simon Roberts. Being completely ignorant I chose this book.

After reading the first chapter I was so confused that I started to unlearn Java. Due to the fact that nearly every sentence was malformed and I needed a dictionary at my side to attempt to understand the incoherent ramblings of the probably non-english speaking authors it took me 3 months to get through the book. This left me 2 weeks left to prepare for the exam. Unfortunateley this was not enough time to take in another book. I took the exam and as a direct result of this book I got a score of 47%.

It was enough to get me fired and now I am unemployed. Thanks a lot Barry Boone and William Robert Stanek. You have really screwed me over!

My advice to anyone: Stay clear of this book. If you are forced to read it at school or work, quit your course or job. I can not emphasize how detramental this book could be to your career or even mental health.

I can't believe it: Example 0.1, Hello World, has a typo in the code!

Any technical book needs accuracy. A certification study guide especially needs to be accurate. And any certification book that messes up a Hello World example has done an unpardonable sin.

There is no excuse. These guys have had essentially a year since the release of Java 2 to write, proofread, correct, and publish this book. Unfortunately, it still looks like it was terribly rushed.

Earlier this year, Sybex published the Heller/Roberts Java 2 certification guide. It, too, had a tremendous number of typos. They pulled the book and published a correct version 2 months later.

McGraw/Hill: you need to do the same. This dog don't hunt. Pull the plug on this edition. Proofread the book, and get a correct version out.

Until the new edition comes out, I cannot possibly see purchasing this book. Get the Heller/Roberts book instead.

At first I was very angry with this book. I now believe it is one of the most humorous books I've ever read. If you are looking to pass the Java Certification exam be sure NOT to buy this book. If you already know Java and are looking for a laugh then this is the book for you.

Its a unfortunate circumstance that this book could have been great. It is well thought out in terms of structure and its style presents the necessary information clearly. The program arises with the examples. Who did the proof reading of this book ? They must be blind. The first example in the book has a typo. The equals sign (=) is shown as the number 5. What is worse that things like this are repeated through out the book. Not only that, but sometimes the errors in the sample questions make it impossible to get the correct answer and so you have to spend time trying to work out what the question really meant to say.

I bought this book hoping I could recommend it to my staff of programmers who I would like to see get their Java certification. Fat chance.

The publisher should recall this book and reprint it, otherwise what's the point!

This could have been a great book, if it were not for the serious errors. The example questions, review questions, and tests seem quite uesful and the overall presentation seems fine, but how can it be trusted with these types of language errors? (following is a small sample)

page 71: Example 2-12 will not compile because "Tree" is in another package and needs to be referenced as "Flora.Tree". The answer says that it *will* compile and run.

page 58: The outdated all-caps "COM." is used to begin packages, instead of the lower-case form.

page 125: Table 5-2 gives grossly incorrect lower bounds for the primitive types.

page 130: This is said to create an array of Strings:

String[] attendees = new String(numAttendees);

// error: should be: "new String[numAttendees]"

page 133: says that the following "will compile successfully":

double[][] identityMatrix = {

{ 1.0, 0.0, 0.0 }

{ 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 }

{ 0.0, 0.0, 1.0 }

}; // error: no commas!

Nice light reading and plenty of typos. I.e. useless. For the guy that reviewed it and wanted his money back .. I returned it and got my money back. I used "A Programmer's Guide to Java Certification" by Mughal & Rasmussen and score extremely well on the exam.