SCJP...still looking

crap I forgot my old pwd

Anyone taken the SCJP exam and can recommend the best book to use for it!?!?!?

crap I forgot my old pwd

If someone gives me a good recommendation I'll give you a cooooookie!

TeKniques

Hey Crap. Since I've been preparing for this exam for the past year or so and I have it on hold temporarily because I have an obligation to put MCSE first for my employer I can recommend the book I think is the best.

Java 2: Sun Certified Programmer & Developer for Java 2 by Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates.

ISBN: 0072226846

Go to Amazon.com and read the reviews and I think you will be satisfied with that selection. A great online resource for the SCJP/SCJD is http://www.javaranch.com

I like Oreo cookies with milk.

Good Luck!

crap I forgot my old pwd

Thank you much!!!!! I can't wait to go check this book out! We need a techexams area for this!

vegetaholic

You can by Whizlabs practice kit too , it's the great one.

mukuljack

The best book is by kathy sierra

Chuu

Passed the SCJP 6 about a month ago, but I had a large Java background to work with. I used both the Sierra book and the Sanghera book.

The Sanghera book is great if you got a good background. It's very dense, like a readable version of the language spec.

The Sierra book is probably better if your background isn't as good. The place this book really shines though is two specific chapters -- inner classes & generics. Inner Classes really deserve their own chapter and the Sanghera book doesn't separate them out. The Sierra book just flat out nails how generics work, the Sanghera book sort of tiptoes around them, almost as if the author wasn't completely comfortable with them.

The material on the SCJP 5 and 6 is almost identical, but the focus changed. There is a *LOT* more on the SCJP6 about threading and generics than there was on the 5. You really need to know threading and generics like the back of your hand.

The practice exams for both books leave a lot to be desired. They tend to spend equal time in all focus areas, when really, that's not what the exam does. When it comes time to really hone your skills, I'd try to get a copy of both practice exams and work them to death, and then spend a full day trying to break generics and threading in every way possible. Using an IDE that does expression validation is invaluable for this.

I can't really talk about specific questions, but I was pretty surprised how hard the threading questions on the actual exam were. Much, much harder than either sample exam. The practice exams seemed to come from a philosophical standpoint of "ok, let's see if you really know how to build threads and how to avoid deadlocks." The exam seems to come from the philosophical standpoint of "ok, I know you know how to build threads and avoid deadlocks -- but do you know what happens when they break in fun and interesting ways?"

You should know collections fairly well, but really, if you just memorize the tree heirachy and remember the difference between comparator and comparable it's cake. They're supposed to be easy.

JDMurray

Thanks for the post. You presented some very useful observations.

CS.Student

i'm reading only detail and detail books.
i feel they are very useful, espisally in your first start