Passed SCJP 1.4 - 88%

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Date: 1 Jul 2004 12:22:19 -0700

My Background:
I was coding in java for more than a year before February 2003(yes
2003), but that was very good groundwork for my concepts et al. Afer
that it was all ASP

and SQL till beginning of 2004 when I picked up .NET. Recently I
cleared my first Microsoft certification(C#) which inspired me to do
java certification

before I forget it all. So I wrote my "Hello world" program in java
again after almost a year and a half of no java. C# (as we all know)
is very very similar

to java though.

Resources used:
* The 'GOD' book - Kathy and Berts
* Java 2 Programmer Exam Cram
* miscellaneous online notes = 2
* java ranch discussions
* 2-3 Dan's exams
* Marcus' mock exams (time for only first one)
* some yahoo groups

Preparation:
* The 'GOD' book - Kathy and Berts(read each page, solved all
questions-this was my window back into Java)
I have a belief that if you read and understand each and every word
from the book then you should be scoring 95%+ on the exam with little
bit practise and

common sense.
* Java 2 Programmer Exam Cram - (I did not have the latest book
though) Firstly I want to thank and appreciate Marcus and William for
their excellent posts

and contriubtion to the forum and the Java community. During my java
learning days in 99-2000 I used one of you guy' website to get through
my toughest

course during my Masters. I don't remember whose site it was but it
had a boat load of tutorials for different expertise levels in Java -
I think it was one

of you guy's web site but am not sure as I could not find it today
when I searched again)
* Java ranch - 2 weeks of browsing - I was not very active but the
forum is very good
* Dan's exams - very very VERY impressive - I simply did not have time
to take 'em all, so did only 2 chapter and 2 comprehensive exams.
Kinda demoralizing

to take these exams 2-3 days before your actual exam day - so take
them during preparation, that is sure to make your concepts strong.
* online study notes and Java ranch
* working full time and married
* took about 1 month on the whole(cleared my Microsoft exam on May
28), but very limited preparation on a daily basis as such - somewhere
about 1.5 hrs on an

average.

My experience:
Not a straightforward exam even if you are well prepared.
No, seriously, you need to be sure that you are well prepared for the
exam as the questions can get tricky sometimes.
Read as much material as possible to get maximum information. There a
lot of mock exams on the net.
Again,Kathy and Berts' book is da BEST IMHO. Quite amazing how most of
the answers can be traced right back to somewhere in the book.
Try to get mock exams/sample questions and such - that helps.
Testing out the finer points by writing code also helps a lot as then
it gets embossed in your brain (for awhile atleast).
Get a Java IDE or better still use note pad for writing your java
code. That will definitely help in preparing for this exam as then
your kowledge will be

ground up.
There are some standard questions that should jump out to you while
studying itself - from topics like garbage collection, threads, bit
operations, Strings, primitives and wrapper classes.
IMHO, the changes in the 1.4 version actually make the exam easier. I
think IO and AWT classes are far more difficult to fathom when
compared to Assertions

and Wrapper classes in depth. Assertions on the exam is ery very easy
and a 30 minute study would get you through most questions on
assertions.

Lastly, I truly feel that the passing percentage for the SCJP exam
should be ATLEAST 70% (75% would be better). Even in my case I was
sure about getting 52%+

with my first week's preparation itself (as I took one mock exam and
got abpout 610 without much preparation). I think the low passing
percentage kinda

devalues the exam. Eeveryone anyway gets 80+ on an average (no offense
intended to anyone at all - sorry if you feel that way).

Remember - Practice makes man perfect (or is it practise!!??)

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