These Light Relief sections are pieces of “infotainment” about Java and the computer industry. This one is heavy on the info, and light on the 'tainment.
Sun Microsystems, the company that originated Java, started offering a Java test and pass certificate to programmers back in 1996. People take these tests for different reasons. Some companies send their employees on Java training courses and buy them this test at the end so they will have a qualification they can take away with them. Other people (like me) took the test at the invitation of the folks at Sun running the program to help them calibrate the results. Some people just like an extra qualification to put on their resume.
It is not (yet) common to see a job advert that mentions Java certification as a prerequisite for the position, but I think it's safe to assume that if you were a hiring manager trying to choose between two otherwise equal candidates, one of whom had demonstrated commitment and interest by obtaining a Java technology certification, you'd probably choose that applicant first. It's a rough, tough world out there in software development, and any steps you can take to boost your own career are worth considering.
After you have learned Java from this book, the way to become a “Sun Certified Java Programmer”(SCJP) is straightforward, but it takes an investment of time. The steps are:
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Learn the SCJP curriculum.
What are they testing for? The test objectives can be found online at suned.sun.com/US/images/certification_progj2se_07_01.pdf (just search for “certification” at java.sun.com if Sun has moved it). Testing covers only four packages:
java.lang, java.io,java.util, andjava.awt(GUI). So you're wasting your time boning up on other packages, until the test is updated. There are plenty of questions on things you use only infrequently, likewait()andnotify()in threads. -
Learn the SCJP test rubric.
The exam lasts two hours and has 59 questions with no optional parts. You should attempt every question, and spend no more than two minutes on each. There are three kinds of question:
Multiple-choice questions with a single correct answer.
Multiple-choice questions with multiple correct answers.
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Practice on the sample tests.
Sample tests and sample questions can be found at the websites listed in Further Reading and at this URL: suned.sun.com/US/certification/java/index.html Some of these resources are free, and some of them are for sale.
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Take the SCJP test.
You sign up with Sun Education Services for $150 (in the U.S.). The tests are locally administered in centers run by a company called Prometric, who also run the Novell and Microsoft certifications. You have to make an appointment for the test with Prometric, then on the due day go along to their local branch. The test is computer-administered and marked, so you get your result immediately after completing it. Sun sends you official confirmation a week or two later in the form of a nice letter that includes a Java lapel pin (if you passed).
You might think you can skip some of the preparatory steps, but that would be a big mistake. You should maintain a healthy respect for the SCJP examination. It is not easy to pass, and many inadequately prepared candidates fail on their first try.
Some of the questions on the test have the form if you were to run this really stupid piece of code that no one would ever write in practice, what would the output be? People don't like those kind of questions, but you may encounter that code when you are helping maintain someone else's code.
Other questions are downright tricky, and focus on a difference between Java and other OOP languages. But they are not phrased that way! You just have to know how Java does something, and a familiarity with C++ could hurt you.
A sticking point for me was the multiple choice questions that expected multiple answers. Such a question may say something like this:
What can cause a thread to stop executing?
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The program exits via a call to
System.exit(0); -
Another thread is given a higher priority.
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A call to the thread's stop method.
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A call to the halt method of the Thread class.
You may read this list and choose an answer like “1.” The correct answer is “1,” “2,” and “3.” If you miss one of these, you still got two-thirds right, but your score is zero. If you get too many questions like this, you risk failing even though you know quite a bit of the material.
The bottom line on all this is that Java certification can't hurt, and as long as you know what you're getting into you'll succeed. Plus, you get the cool lapel pin (Figure 11-4).
