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How do you feel about SoftSCJD?

 
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I took a look at the SoftSCJD project that is listed in the FAQ and was curious how everyone feels about this?
It seems that this product essentially solves all the SCJD design problems for you and just leaves the coding of the assignment to you. The design portion of the SCJD is the most important part of the assignment. I personally toiled over several different designs before settling on the one I used and learned a lot in the process. I think that a product like SoftSCJD may cheapen the SCJD certification by giving an easy out for those willing to dish out the cash.
I am the only one that thinks this?
 
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Anton,
I wouldn't bother with it. Certification is primarily for YOU, so don't try and cheapen it. There are zillions of silly little programming assignments you can pick up if all you needed to do was pump out code. Wrestling through the choices necessary to complete the certification is what this is all about. Without it, it wouldn't be any different from a very lengthy "Hello world."
 
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eh, it's not as bad as doing a search on this forum. you'll find all sorts of design solutions in here. plus it doesn't cost you $65. honestly im not too worried about people getting ahold of designs. you probably wouldn't be able to come up with a "best" design all on your own (unless you spent an exhorbitant amount of time working on the SCJD). like design patterns, there are time tested good ways to design xyz part of the SCJD. i don't feel that, say, people who read GoF's book and used certain design patterns on the SCJD to have an unfair advantage for example. plus, many people in here have max's book. while his sample project in terms of putting things into perspective, you can't just straight out copy it over to SCJD (i have a friend who tried, and believe me, he learned his lesson the hard way).
also, when it comes down to it, you yourself must know exactly why things were done one way or another in your design. im assuming you can't copy the design choices document from softSCJD's assignment and submit it as your own, otherwise Sun would get mighty suspicious about a bunch of similar choices.txt documents coming in. assuming you are a clever enough linguist to move the words around in the design choices document to make it look original, you still have to know intricate details about your design when you take the essay exam. bottom line: you are not gonna pass unless you know all the ins and outs of your project.
 
Anton Hinds
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Originally posted by Nathaniel Stoddard:
Certification is primarily for YOU, so don't try and cheapen it.


I'm not buying the product. I'm just pointing out a short-cut. And I disagree that certifications are for you. Certifications are credentials of your skill to let others know that you had a certain skill at one point.
This would be like your alma mater handing out accredited Bachelor�s degrees to people who only attended half the classes you had to. How would you and others feel about your degree then?
 
Nathaniel Stoddard
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Anton,
I didn't mean to imply that people should get certifications just so they feel they have a reason to get up in the morning. I just meant that you should take it seriously to whatever level you deem appropriate. If a person is just looking for it to show up on Prometric as having passed, that's just fine. But if a person is truly wishing to learn the stuff, then having SoftSCJD do all the work isn't the best way to achieve that goal. Right? As in most of life, there's a healthy balance between spending way too much time getting the certification, and spending so little that it is essentially worthless (unless of course, one doesn't care).
 
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Hello,

I will try my best to answer everyone's concerns in this thread.

Anton: The softSCJD product will definitely not cheapen the SCJD certification exam. The softSCJD product is not only about design but also about coding the sample application. The design decisions that have been taken in designing the sample application are well documented and well explained why a particular design pattern fits in a scenario. The coding of the sample application follows the Java Coding Guidelines and where possible we tried to follow the GUI design guidelines from Sun *though it is not fully using all the portions of the UI design guidelines from Sun*. We provide softSCJD customer with more than 10-15 URLs which contains links to articles which can help them better understand the sample application design and implementation. Alongwith this we ask customers to try out a few things using the existing code ex. a code to check the locking in the sample application. Then there is also some kind of SCJD checklist which can be used by a candidate before submitting the assignment. The sample application is different from the actual assignment in many ways so no one can just copy and paste the code or the design. We agree that there are no short-cuts to success and we are confident that a softSCJD customer can only get guidance in getting started with the assignment but it doesn't offer the short-cut to passing the exam.

Nathaniel: We absolutely agree with your point. The more a candidate digs into the SCJD assignment the more he/she is going to learn. The softSCJD product doesn't tend to stop the candidate from digging. Infact, we try to let the customer realize that we too digged into articles on the web to get started with our application design and implementation ex. Allen Hobb's articles on threading, an article on Smart proxy , article on how to use nested exception handling from www.javaworld.com etc.


Thanks and regards
Manoj Gupta
SoftLearn Systems
www.softlearn-systems.com
 
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