Ken Weller

Congrats Vin

Originally posted by Tom Tolman:
However, methods are resolved dynamically. The call to sup.printVal() is resolved at run time. At this time, it sees that it ACTUALLY is of type sub, so dynamically binds this method and invokes the subclass version.

Keep in mind that this applies to instance methods only. Static methods are resolved based on the compile-time reference type.

Yup, you can "mark" your questions (a little checkbox at the top of the screen), and when you get finished with the last question, a screen will display which shows a list of all 61 questions and your selected answers. The ones that were marked or not answered will be highlighted. You can then select any of them and you will be brought right back to the question. You can also scroll backwards through the questions at any time, even before you get to the end. It's a good system and very easy to use.

Congrats!

Like Marcus said, Dan Chisholm is correct. I probably spent an hour or two per day for three weeks answering all of the questions I could find on his site and going over the answers until I understood. All of my areas of weakness were pretty evident, so I turned to the Java Language Specification for certain things.

I used the Heller & Roberts book for studying, which left me pretty vulnerable on Dan's tests. I can't stress enough for anyone who is stuck with the Heller & Roberts book to refer to the Java Language Specification on Objects & Classes. The book makes some pretty glaring errors, and doesn't cover even cover 30% of what you should know for the exam. I'd also refer to the tutorial on the Sun website for information on the Collections framework, and check out the API docs on the Sun website for info on the Math class as well as String and StringBuffer. I also went over the Thread API doc about 15 times. Just don't forget the basics, especially declarations (of arrays, multidimensional arrays, etc).

Then right before the exam I went through Marcus' mock exams, which gave me a good indication of my weak areas. It must have worked because I scored higher on the real exam than Marcus'.

Originally posted by Corey McGlone:
Usually, just passing is enough. For the most part, employers seem to focus on your experience as a developer, rather than your experience as a test taker. The fact that you're SCJP certified may be a important note, but it's generally just a note and then you move on to other things. At least, that's been my experience.

Very true. I just passed the exam yesterday, and told a few people at work about it. Some were very supportive, others totally uninterested. So as a whole, I'm not really clear how valued the exam is by the development community, but I took it for my own knowledge and growth as a developer so the study process was a very positive experience (I'm not looking for work so that wasn't a motivation).

As far as listing the score on my resume, I suppose I would, just like I make note of my College GPA. I don't see how it can hurt. It's really not much different from sharing your score with friends, or co-workers, or in the JR results forum. I'm assuming the worst case scenario is someone ignores it altogether, but I don't think anyone will look at a high score and be offended or something.
[ September 21, 2004: Message edited by: Ken Weller ]

Congrats, 100% is phenominal! I'm sure even some employees at Sun who work on Java might miss a question or two.

Congrats!

By the way, I forgot to thank everyone at JavaRanch!! Without this site, I would have been eaten alive. A big thanks to JR, everyone here, and Dan and Marcus obviously. What a great community we have here.

Hallelujah, after a little over a month of studying I finally took the test and passed! I was actually surprised that I received a 90% though. On Dan's exams, I was scoring around 65%. On Marcus' exams, I was scoring around 80%. Oh well, no complaints here.

Here's some advice for future test takers:
1) TAKE EARPLUGS! I did. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have been able to concentrate. It was pretty loud in there. I felt sorry for some other test takers without earplugs.
2) If you're studying with the Heller & Roberts book, do yourself a HUGE favour and work through all of Dan's mock exams after you finish that book!!! I have no idea how I would have done without working through Dan's exams. I might have squeeked by with a pass, or I might have failed. Dan, I owe you bigtime! Your exams are amazing, and if anyone can do well on them, expect to do well on the exam. The Heller & Roberts book is good, and it really got me off on the right foot, but view it as a place to start and not a place to finish the study process.
3) Try a lot of code samples on your own. Reading books and doing mock exams help, but what really saved my bacon on at least 8-10 questions was the fact that I had tried something very similar myself and seen the result first hand. I'm sure there are one or two people who can get 100% before coding a line of Java in their life, but for the rest of us, practice really does make perfect.
4) Don't rush. Near the beginning I felt like I was running low on time, but I ended up finishing (and reviewing all of my marked answers) in about 1h:25m. I just happened to have the most difficult questions right off the bat! I would have gone through some of them a third time but I had to use the washroom.

Anyways, sorry for rambling. The test wasn't as hard as Dan's exams but did feel very similar to Marcus'. So if you go through those you'll be fine.

By the way, anyone know how long it takes for the 2test.com site to update your history? I wrote the test earlier this afternoon and just checked my history and it said the test was still pending...?

C doesn't make sense to me at all, so I would also choose B for the same reason you indicated. That's a terribly worded question.

"B" is the output.

Variables are shadowed, methods are overridden.

A new instance of "B" is assigned to "a" (which is type "A"). The call to "a.as" references "as" in class "A", which is set to "name()". Because "B" overrides "name()", this results in "B".

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Like Vicken said, keep in mind that if you do not explicitly make a call to super from a constructor, the superclass' no-args constructor will be automatically called on the first line. That being said, you can avoid having to declare a no-args constructor by making an explicit call from Derived(int x,int y) to a defined constructor in the superclass (exactly like you did in Derived(int s)).

I just wanted to chime in with my opinion about the Heller & Roberts book (Complete Java 2 Certification 4th edition).

First off, the pros of the book are as follows:
- Easy to read. I also have the 1.2 version of Mughal and Rasmussen, which I found a much more difficult book to work through. The M&R book is far more detailed, but much harder to read unless you already have a good deal of knowledge and just need light shed on specific areas.
- That's the only pro, the H&R book is easy to read.

Cons:
- Too short. Only 260 pages devoted to the SCJP exam. The rest of the book deals with the developer exam.
- Vague. Some topics they only touch briefly, others not at all. For instance, they only mention interfaces once in the SCJP portion of the book, and only in the context of object reference conversions.
- Errors. You can tell the editor fell asleep on the job, because they make such errors as defining a double as 16 bit (I assume they meant 64), and using the terms inner and nested class interchangably. I'm not even sure if they compared the book to the JLS.
- Exam questions are simply. Most of them only have one correct answer.

Overall recommendation:

Better books exist. Based on reviews here, I would purchase K&B and take a pass on this one. However, if you're stuck with it like me, I don't think all is lost. The beginning chapters seem quite good, so study the book as phase 1 of your exam prep, and then do as many of Dan's mock exams as your brain can handle. Download the JLS and whereever you've been led astray (which will be obvious when you take Dan's exams), study the JLS for the real story. As a warning, I would definately study the entire JLS chapter on classes after you read the H&R chapter, because there are so many things left out of that book its not funny. Anyways, I still have three weeks or so until the test, so hopefully I can move past the shortcomings of this book and still pull off a decent score.

You can get the PDF from the CDROM that comes with the book, and you can find the book at most large bookstores.