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Coverage of "good technique" in the book

 
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I'm curious to know what items we can expect in the coverage of "good technique" in the book. As the current version of Java adopts more and more from projects such as Spring, Seam, and other open-source leaders in the ecosystem, I'm curious to know if there is a discussion on the pros and cons of Spring versus CDI/Weld, or if those topics are beyond the scope that is being covered. I to am curious to know if the book is more oriented to the test, or if it just happens to cover most topics that the test would have? Also, is there a sample test provided as part of the book?

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David
 
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Hi David -

That's a lot of questions!

The Essentials series that Sybex-Wiley produces are meant to be "short and to-the-point" (less than 400 pages). The target audience are people with little or no programming experience. The publisher also wants books in this series to be a useful supplement to a semester-long course. That's a lot of points to juggle, from a writer's perspective, but that's the gig.

With that in mind, any reference to the technologies you listed don't fit. This book just covers fundamental programming in Java.

The coverage of OCA exam objectives is complete. We made sure to hit every point and cover it with a variety of examples. In a lot of the text, I focus on code examples that demonstrate or test the facilities the candidate is expected to understand. I'm a big fan in getting introductory students to write test code as a way of building their own notes.

There is no mock exam that accompanies the book, but each chapter has 10 test questions and 4-5 exercises to work through. I'm confident these questions will prepare a candidate pretty well for the actual exam.
 
David Sachdev
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Michael Ernest wrote:Hi David -
I'm a big fan in getting introductory students to write test code as a way of building their own notes.



I think that the focus of having new developers writing tests is great, and I'm glad that you've included it in your book. It isn't something that was taught, or even focused on when I got my CS degree. These days, I personally could not live without JUnit, Mockito, and the various testing frameworks that assure me that when I think I've finished my task....I really have, and that my code truly works. It also helps developers focus on edge cases, and sanitizing their inputs. Kudos for including that in your book!
 
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Correct me if I am wrong: When Michael says test code; I am not certain that he meant Unit Test Code.
 
Michael Ernest
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An Nguyen wrote:Correct me if I am wrong: When Michael says test code; I am not certain that he meant Unit Test Code.


I meant to introduce the idea of unit testing without bringing in the topic formally. The book is aimed at beginners, specifically college-level students and self-teaching types. With that in mind, I wanted to introduce the discipline of testing through practical example, and leave it to readers, should they have any experience in this area, to figure out if I am referring to unit testing in some rudimentary way. That way, a teacher can decide if they want to say more on this point, using the book examples as a rough guide, or just leave it as a worthy idea that will come up later in a full course of study.
 
David Sachdev
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Wow - I did massively misread that!

An Nguyen wrote:Correct me if I am wrong: When Michael says test code; I am not certain that he meant Unit Test Code.

 
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