thejavajar

Passed. My study and prep time is over and I couldn’t be more excited. I don’t know if I am more excited about passing the exam or more excited about not having to study for it. It was a tough test, and there were a few turns and curves that I wasn’t really prepared for. I mostly got stuck on some code examples that I did not recognize or did not know how to interpret.

I studied a solid 8 days total, 7 evenings after work and one Sunday. I am horrible at taking tests so maybe my prep and study time was a bit too much. I don’t know, if you are Java Web developer doing CRUD work, you may not have a true understanding of all what Java has to offer, especially if you are always tied to a framework that hides most of the Java code implementation. I love frameworks like Spring, Hibernate, iBatis, and Struts because I do not want to do all the work someone has already done. I see a need for frameworks, especially when you are always repeating the same set of tasks. But if you are doing something new in a new “space”, then you really need to know where Java can help you.

I have decided to take the SCJP 5.0 Exam. From I what I have been told and what I have read online, the test is not necessarily hard but rather tricky and populated with deceitful code. We’ll see. I have been wanting to take the exam for quite some time, but I have never found (or made) time to study.

I have been working with Java for quite some time and I think I am moderately proficient with the language but with some dependency on an IDE for most of my development. Most of my development experience has existed in the enterprise world; EJB’s, Web Services, and Web Development. I have rarely paid attention to Threads or File I/O when working with Java, so those are some areas that I need to focus on.

I have created a small study guide that coincides with chapters from an exam preparation book and the objectives of the exam. It is basically some notes and code samples that are the center of topic for each subsection of each chapter. I will work on a few online sample tests and a few sample questions from the book once I am done with my study guide and hopefully this will be enough preparation for the exam.