Yes, Dear JavaRanchers, I finally made it thanks to God, and all the extremely helpful people here.
The Section Analysis:
Declarations and access control100%
Flow control and exception handling100%
Garbage Collection0%
Language Fundamentals88%
Operators and Assignments85%
O.O. RTT, and Object Orientations71%
Threads85%
The java.awt package100%
The java.lang package100%
The java.util package100%
The java.io package100%
I sat for the exam yesterday (21st May 2001), saw the first question, and felt as if I was hit by lightning! It was a type-in question!! What a way to start the
test!!! Throughout the 2 hours, a cloud hung over me, and I was very tense for almost 10 minutes. The type-in questions have caused the most confusion and controversy(to-quote-or-not-to-quote), and I was hoping that I would get none of them... I got four! yes I have typed it right, four!
I marked the first question, as I could not concentrate. After about 10 min, I relaxed a bit, and was able to concentrate properly. The type-in questions came in regularly after a gap of about 9-10 questions, and I would get a little bit tense again.
I decided to stop thinking about the type-in questions and started answering other questions. As I was well prepared, I was able to answer most of the questions confidently. There were no surprises on the test.
I decided to use a strategy for the type-in questions. Wherever it was asked "What is the output?", I did not use quotes. Wherever it was asked "What is the value of the
String variable after the code is executed?", I used quotes.
I got all the four type-in questions correct!!! So I guess it was a correct strategy.
I would sincerely like to thank all the people who helped me with the difficulties, especially Cindy, Bill(so kind of him), Velmurugan for his fantastic notes, Marcus Green for his mock exams, the JQPlus team, and Maha Anna for the excellent links to the resources.
My Garbage Collection score is awful; I could not sleep last night because of it. It was the simplest of all GC questions, asking on which line is the object eligible for GC. How could I have missed it? GC was one of my strong topics. I am so embarassed. I think Sun should ask 2 questions on GC, so that even if someone misses one of them, he/she can still have a chance to get a score.
Anyways I am happy now, and I would again like to thank all the people mentioned above; without their help, it would have been very difficult to get the Certification.
Prasanna Wamanacharya
Sun Certified Programmer for the Java� 2 Platform
[This message has been edited by Prasanna Wamanacharya (edited May 22, 2001).]