will learning Swing, AWT etc help for Java certification?

[Babu Muthukrishnan]

Hello All,
will learning Swing, AWT etc help for Java certification?
Please guide me
Thank you

[Campbell Ritchie]

What does it say in the exam syllabus?

[Babu Muthukrishnan]

Hello Campbell Ritchie,
Thanks for reply. I did not refer exam syllabus for certification purpose
I just want to learn Swing and AWT for learning Java 7 and higher version
Swing and AWT supported in Java 17?
Please guide me
Thank you

[Paul Anilprem]

>will learning Swing, AWT etc help for Java certification?
No, because these topics have never been on any certification exam for Java. (Edited to prevent automatic linking to irrelevant thread.)

>Swing and AWT supported in Java 17?
Yes, but they are rarely, if at all, used for front end development these days.

>I just want to learn Swing and AWT for learning Java 7 and higher version
Not sure why want to learn Swing and AWT for learning Java 7. Swing and AWT have remained unchanged since Java 1.5.  May be if you provide more details of what exactly is in your mind, people here can provide better suggestions.

[Babu Muthukrishnan]

Hello Paul Anilprem, In 2018-2019 I went to NIIT Chennai (java 7 training ) for Java 7 certification preparation purpose. Some case studies in that training were based on Swing. Now I am feeling If I do case studies in Swing I can prepare for Java 8 and Java 17 certification as well. Thats is why I am interested in learning AWT and Swing. If I prepare AWT and Swing, can I improve knowledge in Java? AWT and Swing available in job market? Please guide me.      

[Paul Anilprem]

I am sorry, I just remembered that Sun had a "Java Developer" certification, aka SCJD, which required a candidate to develop an Swing/AWT/RMI based client/server application.
May be the training program you attended was geared towards that certification.

But again, Swing and AWT are outdated and I don't believe there are very many job opportunities in that area. It is not to say that they are bad technologies. You can certainly improve your Java knowledge and expertise by developing a client/server application in Swing/RMI in Java 17 (but I think RMI is deprecated too now, imns). You may even implement the assignment that Sun asked the certification exam candidates to implement (you may google the assignment).
I still wouldn't suggest spending time on it if your goal is to acquire a Java 8/11/17 certification though. For that, I would suggest you to go through a certification book.

Added later:
You attended the training program in 2018-2019? and that involved Swing/AWT? They should have known better, is all I would say about it.

[Babu Muthukrishnan]

Hello Paul Anilprem, Java 8 complete reference book contains chapters related to AWT and Swing. I feel they are relevant to java certification.  Thank you

[Paul Anilprem]

No, AWT and Swing are not relevant to java certification anymore.
As Campbell suggested, you can confirm that by going through the exam objectives/syllabus. You will find the links in the FAQ.
The book you mentioned is not geared towards certification, so better not rely on it for certification purpose.

[Babu Muthukrishnan]

Hello Paul Anilprem, I studied one Java 8 certification book, They referred GUI packages in one of the chapter. I think Direct and indirect content related to AWT and Swing will come in Java certification book similar to exams. Thank you

[Campbell Ritchie]

Babu Muthukrishnan wrote:. . . . I think Direct and indirect content related to AWT and Swing will come in Java certification book similar to exams.

Did you read the syllabus? That gives you the definitive answer.
I think you have misunderstood what Paul A told you. It might be worth learning Swing (but I think there are better things to learn) but he told you it won't come up in the exams.

Thank you

That's a pleasure.

[Paul Clapham]

As for life beyond certification exams, if there's going to be one: Swing might be useful but it's not much used these days. Although I suppose you might be asked to maintain an old Swing application. But AWT? Forget it. It was made obsolete by Swing nearly 20 years ago. There's absolutely no case to be made for learning it now.

[Tim Holloway]

Irrespective of certifications, but of general interest, I hope:

Java desktop applications are few and far between these days, even the non-GUI ones. Desktop applications as a whole are a limited market, with web-based being a generally preferred platform to the point that a lot of products will actually have webservers built into them for administration. Likewise Spring Boot has made a lot of desktop applications web-based.

There are, however, some very good Java GUI desktop applications, still. My favorite Gantt, video editor, mind-mapping, and UML diagramming tools are Java GUI apps, as is SchemaSpy, my favorite tool for documenting databases. And not to forget that ever-useful ETL tool, Pentaho DTI.

And of course, who among us isn't using a Java-based IDE such as Eclipse, IntelliJ or NetBeans?

Which brings up another consideration. AWT and Swing aren't the only GUI games in JavaTown. Eclipse and Pentaho use a third-party UI framework called SWT.

It's not 100% true that AWT is dead. Swing was built on top of AWT. But nobody who wants to stay sane uses raw AWT. It was crude, brutal, and had horrible performance to boot.