Certification

Java 2 Certification Training Guide

Format: Hardcover
Author: Jamie Jaworski
ReleaseDate: July, 1999
Publisher: New Riders Publishing
Rating:

This books is very bad, do not buy it.
It is very expensive and is completely valueless for passing the exam. This book is atrocious. It provides no real information, rather it is an endless checklist of things that you need to know to pass the exam. Sun provides this for free in their test objectives list. The mock exam is exactly that, a mockery of an exam. The test engine barely works (I had to modify several files to get it to work) and the questions are poorly phrased and confusing. I would strongly advice anyone who wants to pass the test to save their money and purchase another book instead.

Riddled with errors, typos, and omissions
There is a typo or an outright mistake on nearly every page. So far I have read 6 chapters of Part I. Semantics of the language are described either incorrectly or in terms too vague to even be wrong. Whoever typeset the thing put "fi" and "fl" ligatures in the monospaced code typeface, and after about 100 pages forgot to indicate syntactic metavariables with italics. When I read others' reviews saying that the real exam questions are much harder than those in this book, and then I find that the ones in the book actually have incorrect answers given in some cases, I lose all faith in the rest. I guess you get what you pay for.

Outdated Programmer Cert Section
The example questions were outdated and nowhere near the level of complexity found on the actual test. Used this book exclusively to study for the J2CP test. I passed, but not because of this book (5+ yrs experience w/ Java).

The developer certification section was short on content. Now that Sun has beefed up the Architect exam, I wouldn't trust the Architect section in this book.

The book is good at giving you a solid understanding of the Java language basics. However, the purpose of buying a book like this is to prepare for and pass the certification tests, and there is no hope for someone with little experience to pass any of the exams using this book.