About the SCJP 5 Technical Review Team
We don’t know who burned the most midnight oil, but we can (and did) count everybody’s edits—so in order of most edits made, we proudly present our Superstars.
Our top honors go to Kristin Stromberg—every time you see a semicolon used correctly, tip your hat to Kristin. Next up is Burk Hufnagel who fixed more code than we care to admit. Bill Mietelski and Gian Franco Casula caught every kind of error we threw at them—awesome job, guys! Devender Thareja made sure we didn’t use too much slang, and Mark Spritzler kept the humor coming. Mikalai Zaikin and Seema Manivannan made great catches every step of the way, and Marilyn de Queiroz and Valentin Crettaz both put in another stellar performance (saving our butts yet again).
Marcelo Ortega, Jef Cumps (another veteran), Andrew Monkhouse, and Jeroen Sterken rounded out our crew of Superstars—thanks to you all. Jim Yingst was a member of the Sun exam creation team, and he helped us write and review some of the twistier questions in the book (bwa-ha-ha-ha).
As always, every time you read a clean page, thank our reviewers, and if you do catch an error, it’s most certainly because your authors messed up. And oh, one last thanks to Johannes. You rule, dude!
About the SCJP 6 Technical Review Team
Since the upgrade to the Java 6 exam was like a small surgical strike we decided that the technical review team for this update to the book needed to be similarly fashioned. To that end we hand-picked an elite crew of JavaRanch’s top gurus to perform the review for the Java 6 exam.
Our endless gratitude goes to Mikalai Zaikin. Mikalai played a huge role in the Java 5 book, and he returned to help us out again for this Java 6 edition. We need to thank Volha, Anastasia, and Daria for letting us borrow Mikalai. His comments and edits helped us make huge improvements to the book. Thanks, Mikalai!
Marc Peabody gets special kudos for helping us out on a double header! In addition to helping us with Sun’s new SCWCD exam, Marc pitched in with a great set of edits for this book—you saved our bacon this winter, Marc! (BTW, we didn’t learn until late in the game that Marc, Bryan Basham, and Bert all share a passion for ultimate Frisbee!)
Like several of our reviewers, not only does Fred Rosenberger volunteer copious amounts of his time moderating at JavaRanch, he also found time to help us out with this book. Stacey and Olivia, you have our thanks for loaning us Fred for a while.
Marc Weber moderates at some of JavaRanch’s busiest forums. Marc knows his stuff and uncovered some really sneaky problems that were buried in the book. While we really appreciate Marc’s help, we need to warn you all to watch out—he’s got a Phaser!
Finally, we send our thanks to Christophe Verre—if we can find him. It appears that Christophe performs his JavaRanch moderation duties from various locations around the globe, including France, Wales, and most recently Tokyo. On more than one occasion Christophe protected us from our own lack of organization. Thanks for your patience, Christophe! It’s important to know that these guys all donated their reviewer honorariums to JavaRanch! The JavaRanch community is in your debt.
The OCA 7 and OCP 7 Team
Contributing Authors
The OCA 7 exam is primarily a useful repackaging of some of the objectives from the SCJP 6 exam. On the other hand, the OCP 7 exam introduced a vast array of brand-new topics. We enlisted several talented Java gurus to help us cover some of the new topics on the OCP 7 exam. Thanks and kudos to Tom McGinn for his fantastic work in creating the massive JDBC chapter. Several reviewers told us that Tom did an amazing job channeling the informal tone we use throughout the book. Next, thanks to Jeanne Boyarsky. Jeanne was truly a renaissance woman on this project. She contributed to several OCP chapters; she wrote some questions for the master exams; she performed some project management activities; and as if that wasn’t enough, she was one of our most energetic technical reviewers. Jeanne, we can’t thank you enough. Our thanks go to Matt Heimer for his excellent work on the Concurrent chapter. A really tough topic nicely handled! Finally, Roel De Nijs and Roberto Perillo made some nice contributions to the book and helped out on the technical review team—thanks, guys!
Technical Review Team
Roel, what can we say? Your work as a technical reviewer is unparalleled. Roel caught so many technical errors, it made our heads spin. Between the printed book and all the material on the CD, we estimate that there are over 1,500 pages of “stuff” here. It’s huge! Roel grinded through page after page, never lost his focus, and made this book better in countless ways. Thank you, Roel!
In addition to her other contributions, Jeanne provided one of the most thorough technical reviews we received. (We think she enlisted her team of killer robots to help her!)
It seems like no K&B book would be complete without help from our old friend Mikalai Zaikin. Somehow, between earning 812 different Java certifications, being a husband and father (thanks to Volha, Anastasia, Daria, and Ivan), and being a “theoretical fisherman” [sic], Mikalai made substantial contributions to the quality of the book; we’re honored that you helped us again, Mikalai.
Next up, we’d like to thank Vijitha Kumara, JavaRanch moderator and tech reviewer extraordinaire. We had many reviewers help out during the long course of writing this book, but Vijitha was one of the few who stuck with us from Chapter 1 all the way through the master exams and on to Chapter 15. Vijitha, thank you for your help and persistence!
Finally, thanks to the rest of our review team: Roberto Perillo (who also wrote some killer exam questions), Jim Yingst (was this your fourth time?), other repeat offenders: Fred Rosenberger, Christophe Verre, Devaka Cooray, Marc Peabody, and newcomer Amit Ghorpade—thanks, guys!
About the OCA 8 Technical Review Team
Due to “pilot error” on your authors’ part, the members of the review team for this book were asked to work under a tighter-than-ideal schedule. We owe a huge thanks to our six reviewers for this book, who leapt to action on short notice and once again made numerous fine contributions to the quality of the book. As has become “the norm,” all our reviewers are moderators at the finest Java community website in the whole universe, Coderanch.com.
Our first mention goes to Campbell Ritchie, long-time Coderanch moderator, hiker of steep hills, and, by our count, most prolific reviewer for this edition. In other words, Campbell found the most errors. Among other pursuits, Campbell is an expert in both pathology and programming, because…why not? Every time you read an error-free page, think of Campbell and thank him.
In a virtual tie for second place in the “errors found” competition, we present Paweł Baczyński and Fritz Walraven. Paweł calls Poland his home and is most proud of his wife, Ania, and kids, Szymek and Gabrysia. He is almost as proud of the fact that we have to use a special keyboard to spell his name correctly!
Fritz hails from the Netherlands, and if we understand correctly, cheers his kids as they demonstrate their athletic prowess in various sports venues around Amersfoort. Fritz has also volunteered at an orphanage in Uganda (we hope he teaches those kids Java!). Fritz, if we ever meet in person, Bert hereby challenges you to a table tennis match.
We’d like to give a special shout out to Fritz and Pawel for sticking with us from Chapter 1 all the way through to the second practice exam. It was a marathon, and we thank you both.
Next, we’d like to thank returning reviewer Vijitha Kumara. That’s right, he’s helped us before and yet he volunteered again—wow! When Vijitha isn’t traveling or hiking, he enjoys what he refers to as “crazy experiments.” We love you, Vijitha—don’t blow yourself up!
Tim Cooke was there when we needed him, at the beginning of the process and again to help us wrap things up. We like Tim even though he’s been known to spend time with nefarious “functional programmers.” (We suspect that’s where he was when he went missing for a few of the middle-of-the-book chapters.) Tim lives in Ireland and started programming at an early age on an Amstrad CPC 464. Nice!
Finally, a special thanks to another veteran of the technical review team, Roberto Perillo. Thanks for coming back to help us again Roberto. Roberto is a family man who loves spending time with his son, Lorenzo. Once Lorenzo has gone to bed, Roberto is known to play a bit of guitar or cheer for the Sao Paulo “Futebol Clube” (we think this is a soccer team).
You guys are all awesome. Thanks for your wonderful assistance.