Rating: 
Summary: Not a SCJD study guide
Review: The book title is misleading. I needed a SCJD study guide. The book is primarily the SCJP (310-035) study guide occupying 555 out of 750 pages. The SCJD section is nothing but a listing of questions for you to think about. While the questions may be useful, they by no means warrant the "Developer" portion of the title. If you are looking for a real SCJD study guide, get yourself a copy of "The Sun Certified Java Developer Exam with J2SE 1.4" by Mehran Habibi, et al, instead. It has a real example that is developed throughout the book.
Rating: 
Summary: A book you must have to pass SCJP1.4
Review: The best book on the market. I learned a lot from studying this book. It is a "must have"!!!
Rating:
Summary: Very clear and easy-to-read, up-to-date
Review: I was on a beta review team for this book, and it was the book I wish I'd had when I was preparing for the exam. Things that were not made clear to me from other books were suddenly lightbulbs turning on. One of the authors was apparently on the team that actually CREATED the real Sun exam (at least the latest one, for 1.4, I think), so the topics and sample questions are exactly in line with what the real exam is like. There are a few new things (assertions) that were not on the exam when I took it, so I can't speak to how well those match the new exam, but from everything I can remember, this book is dead on.
The tone of the writing is very friendly, casual and informal. If you're looking for a computer science text book, this is not it. This book sounds like having the guy in the next cube sit down and talk to you about how things REALLY work, and if you don't get it he just keeps trying.
There were a few errors when we proof-read it, so hopefully these were all fixed, but they were mostly typos that did not hurt your ability to learn and prepare for the exam. Also, it does *not* cover material that is not on the exam. I happen to like this about it -- if I want to learn more and more about Java I'll read something else, thank you very much. My big concern when I was studying for the exam was to PASS THE FRICKIN THING. It makes it clear over and over that the book is about helping you get through the exam. Period.
But -- not everyone likes this approach, and if you want a more comprehensive (but very dry and textbook-like) discussion of Java overall, then you might want one of the other exam books.
I thought the two most helpful parts are the "Exam Tip" (or 'exam watch", something like that) highlights that point out traps or pitfalls or key things about the way a particular thing might be shown on the exam, and also the Two Minute Summary (which takes a lot more than two minutes) that is a list of the key bullet points from the chapter. The summary is a perfect thing for cramming. I would photocopy these and carry them around with me if I were preparing for the exam now.
And the mock/sample exam questions are very, very realistic. When I took the test, I had been studying with another book -- the Roberts and Heller book -- which was excellent, but the questions in that book did not prepare me completely for how shocking (hard) some of the *real* questions were on the exam.
I think it covers most of the topics in exactly the right level of detail, although there were a few areas where the explanations started from the very beginning, as though I'd never seen Java before. They didn't make too many assumptions about how much I already knew, so sometimes there will probably be parts you can skip over because you already know it, but it still moves all the way through to the advanced parts of the topic, small step by small step.
I'm a software developer with a long background in C, but I hadn't had much OO and Java when I first started trying to learn Java and get certified, and this would have been the best book for me. If I had been a Java guru already, or even a C++ guru, I might have wanted more overall Java rather than just the exam-specific info, but for me, this still would have been the best book to actually prepare for the taking the test. I scored an 81% on the exam, but I think with this book I would have done much better.
Rating:
Summary: Confusing, awfully written, a torture
Review: I am very negative about this book, but this might derive also from wrong expectations on my side. I bought this book for the same reason why I want to take the exam: to achieve a comprehensive, up-to-date and "official" knowledge of Java fundamentals.I realize now that mine was a mistake, the essence of this book is exactly what it advertises on the cover: a quick-and-dirty guide for passing the exam, which by the way happens to be not-so-quick. The expert who wants to be more acquainted with yet another programming language will find it confusing and unstructured, or plainly awful. In the first chapter alone, and I am limiting to chapter one because after that I stopped noting down the confusing points, there are some ambiguities that I found very annoying. For example on page 16 it is hinted that the best primitive types to represent amounts in dollars and cent are float or double, which will make designers of banking systems scream in horror. On page 36 is stated "Array elements are always always always given default values [...]" while on page 37 "Local variables, including primitives, always always always must be initialized before you use them". Although these apparently contradicting statements are both true, it would have been a good idea to formally define the term "local variable" and explain why array elements cannot ever be local variables, or if in fact they are variables at all, especially since the authors have gone to the extent of writing "always" six times, as if the reader could be blind. These predications seem subtle, academic and unnecessary, but for an exam based on subtle distinctions, they are rather gross generalizations. As a further example, page 43 states that a char literal can be represented as an integer as long as the integer is less than 65536 and on page 55 the authors seem to state implicitly that assigning an int to a float comport no loss of precision because they are both 32 bits values. If these would ever come up as an exam questions one would flunk them, since the value -3 is an integer less than 65536 but is not a valid char value, and assigning the int value 1234567890 to a float does imply a loss of precision (accuracy actually) although Java allows it. If you are currently preparing for the exam on this book, I suggest downloading the Java Specification Language (you can find it at sun.com) to try to clean a little of this mess by yourself. As a final note, and I apologize with the authors for the bluntness of it, the prose is absolutely awful, I am sorry to remind the authors that writing a book is about writing a book, and this requires some skills in book-writing. The text is interspersed with pathetic attempts of humour, with the characteristic of being both not funny and hopelessly nerdish, in some cases patronizing (like telling us to go to bed early the night before the exam, which is almost offensive) or just plainly annoying. The authors resort often to funny expedients like making a statement and then few lines later telling us it was a joke. I am usually very patient, but in more than one occasion, I had the impulse to throw the book at the wall, infuriated by the sheer stupidity and the cringing wordiness of some of the passages. It is an absolute torture, and it has had the effect of making me swear not to buy any McGraw-Hill book anymore, especially when considering some other elegantly written publications by Prentice-Hall, O'Reilly and especially Addison-Wesley. What are you people doing all day at McGraw-Hill? Don't you read manuscripts before publishing them?
Rating:
Summary: Scored 95%
Review: I gave SCJP1.4 in July 2004 & scored 95% (58/61). I would like to share my success story to all fellow aspirants who wanna clear SCJP1.4 with top score.
Kathy's book is must. Kathy & Bert have an awesome writing style & they literally burnt the core concepts into my head. Here is my success story.
1) I read Java 2 Programmer by Exam Cram first. This gave me good kick start.
2) Then I read chapters which I was weak on from different books.
a) Threads - Head First Java : Would give you a thorough understanding of what thread programming is
b) Threads - From Simon Robert's certification book.
c) Inner Class - From Simon Robert's certification book. 2) This book (by Kathy Sierra, Bert Bates). You can skip first few chapters but solve all their review questions. Read method overloading, exceptions, inner class, Threads, Collections, java.lang, hashcode & Garbage Collection completely. 3) Gave all related topic tests from www.javaprepare.com, Dan Chisholm's single topic exams. 4) Read Topics : method overloading, exceptions, inner class, Threads, Collections, Garbage Collection from Marcus Green website 5) Gave Marcus Green mock test. 6) Kathy's book simulator exam. 7) Whizlab - SCJP1.4 : Those guys are awesome. Their tests are real tough & tricky. Their exam quick prep is the best. If you score above 75% in their test I can say you can crush SCJP1.4 easily. I could not complete all 9 mock exams though but I completed 4 for them & just before the test I gave final mock exam. I scored 78% in their final mock exam. I knew that time I would be scoring 85% plus atleast in the grand finale.. :-) 8) Do review questions from Khalid Mughal's book on method overloading, Threads, Garbage Collection & collections topic. 9) Please read each line of code, each question sentence to avoid careless mistake. 2 weeks of real study should take you to achieve real good score. Once again, SCJP1.4 is not simple as such. Its tricky. Questions on threads, method overloading, OOPs, Garbage Collection were on same toughness with Whizlab tests. I credit my success to Kathy Sierra & Bert Bates. I had fun studying for SCJP1.4. Passing is easy but scoring is tough!!
Rating:
Summary: BestBook for java certification
Review: I surfed in net to get the best book for certification in java,
finally i got Kathy Sierra book is the best choice who one going to take the exam
Rating:
Summary: I passed!
Review: This book is great! I've been programming Java for 2 years now. I studied for this certification exam for 4 months, about 30 minutes of studying every other day (on average). I scored 88%!
Thanks to this book and prayers!
Rating:
Summary: It is ***true***, all you need is this book.
Review: I just passed the exam with over 90%. I used this book alone. Most of the questions are very similar with the questions from the book, some are exactly the same!
Rating:
Summary: All You Need To Pass The Programmer Exam
Review: I finished the Programmer's exam section in about 5 days and passed the exam.
The book covers all the things you need to know about the exam. It not only provides detail information about the syntax and theories behind Java to help you memorized the materials, but also gives you a list of key points at the end of each chapter.
BE SURE TO go through every problem on the book and UNDERSTAND why each MC option is right/wrong. And MEMORIZE all the tables that the book asks you to memorize - they really appear on the exam!
Rating:
Summary: Simply the best!
Review: Although I took the exam 2 years ago, I have never got over the fact that I have not written a review.
The book is simply the best! Not only is it a brilliant Java certification book, it is the best computing book I have ever come across! It literally takes you inside the JDK so you can see how things are done. It explains complex topics with incredible simplicity. What is more, its breath and depth is spot on!
If you already understand the basic fundamentals of Java, then all you need to do to pass the exam is: (1) read this book at least twice and (2) score at least 80% in all the exercises at the end of each chapter - I did not touch the exercises on the cd or the internet. I would be surprised if you do not score at least 70% in the exam after doing this.
Even after the exam, you will find yourself referencing the book a lot. It is simply worth its weight in gold!
Gambatte kudasai - All the best.
|
