This morning I passed
SCJP with 80%.
I am incredibly happy and thankful, especially to the
Javaranch and its friendly and helpful folks.
I feel especially grateful to Marilyn de Queiroz
and her cattle drive nitpicking, and to Barry Gaunt who
never seemed even to hesitate to install whole programs/OS if
necessary for an answer.
My good score came undoubtedly through studying the fantastic book
by Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates. How do they do it that
it not only covers all exam topics thoroughly and in
utterly concise language, but also with so much humor?
Java Passion is felt on every page, so much is clear.
(I even misuse this book sometimes as a "ordinary" reference book).
Big thanks to the authors!!
And here is how I prepared for the exam:
I took 2 months unpaid leave from work and studied 6 hours per day.
I divided the chapters in two's or three's and made myself a study plan
for each day what to study the first time and what to repeat.
Everything I felt I was not 200% sure of I wrote on little flipping
cards. I never took the streetcar without a bunch of those
cards in my pockets.
When I was through with the book for the first time, I bought the
JQPlus V4 mock exams and did one almost every day.
I also did the Chisholm mock exams.
Then I went through the book a 2nd time.
To befriend the many Math classes with different return values etc, I made myself little poems which worked really well for remembering! I also littered the flat with pictures (collections), courage building sentences (Huxley) and disturbed my non-Java friends with detailed explanations about the garbage collector and threads.
My background is originally not programming
(I graduated in music), and Java is my first programming language
(since many years I work with databases, though).
Important was doing the cattle drive assignments and some self-made assignments, meaning "getting the hands dirty with code",
and having the Javaranch Forums "out there", all that together helped
me coming this far. I hope this description helps encouraging others
with non-programming backgrounds too, that they
can pass this exam.
