I used the Mughal book and found it to be *very* difficult going for certification preperation, but it's definitely a great reference book. These guys know their stuff.
The authors were, however, unresponsive to various questions I tried to ask them. This is a negative in my opinion. (Of coruse, there's always Javaranch <s>
The errata alone for the Mughal book took me over an hour to apply to the various chapters. Their Web errata page didn't tell you, in most cases, where to look on a particular page in their book to replace x with y so you had to read the entire page to find where to make a change (some errors were really necessary to correct, however).
Here's an example of how the Mughal book didn't help me: if the certification (SCJP)
test were to ask you about some topic 'x' in a particular context, the Mughal book would introduce x, describe it to an extent, and show it in complicated code contexts rather than in the way the test would present it. Thus, you might study the wrong way or prepare the wrong way. I did.
A lot of the code in the Muhgal book is, IMHO, overly (needlesslly) complicated to demonstrate the point being discussed and doesn't always use best practices (e.g., self-documenting method names). So the examples can take a "while" to grasp. Sure, some of the concepts are complicated too, but IMHO the book should make them simpler through example not more complicated.
However, maybe all this is done on purpose to help you prepare for the "real world" where you'd have to (1) take the SCJP or (2) really maintain some one else's "less-than-wonderful code". Dunno.
Since everyone raves about the other book mentioned here (and on Amazon it gets over a hundered reviews with about a 4 1/2 star rating), I'd get it and maybe get the Mughal book as a reference (or if you really want to torture yourself <g>
.
The sample examps on the CD with the Mughal book are really cool to play with (and to see how difficult a Mock exam could be), but I found little, if any, relation of these mock exams to the actual test.
The Dan Chrisholm Mock exams seem closer but are still more difficult than the real exam, since on the real test, they tell you how many options to pick (and the testing program even tells you if you've accidentlly picked too many).
My 2-cents.
Hope this helps.
John
That book is really not suitable for exam! Only use for reference!
