Hi Simon,
I'm sorry to hear that you didn't pass your OCA exam. My background is similar to yours. I am also a complete rookie (little to no programming experience). I started learning Java on my own until I was confident enough to pass the hiring technical interview. I recently obtained my OCA certification. In my case, it took me 2-3 months of studying before I felt ready.
I used the following resources:
- a
Udemy video tutorial when I was learning the basics of Java
And for the exam specifically:
- Jeanne's and Scott's book, which I highly recommend. I started off with Gupta's book but quickly switched to the other one because I felt that the explanations were a lot clearer.
- the enthuware mock exams
- the kind advice of the people here on CodeRanch
I was told that once I was able to score >=80% on the Enthuware exams, that I would be ready for the real exam. Try to aim for that as well. When you do exercises (be it from a book or elsewhere) also study the answers really well, even if you got it right. You still learn a lot from that.
All the best!!!