Head First Servlets and JSP: Passing the Sun Certified Web Component Developer Exam (SCWCD)

Head First Design Patterns

Head First EJB (Brain-Friendly Study Guides; Enterprise JavaBeans)

Java 2 Developer Exam Cram 2 (Exam Cram CX-310-252A and CX-310-027)

Certification

The Sun Certified Java Developer Exam with J2SE 1.4

Format: Paperback
Author: Terry Camerlengo
ReleaseDate: 02 August, 2002
Publisher: Apress
Rating:

Lacking in quality and apparent understanding
If you have taken the second version, you will know more about threads than what this book tells you. First of all, the book assumes you have passed the SCJP v1 certification, where AWT was a major topic and threads weren't. However, that is a problem that can be ignored if you know it.

A bigger problem is that there are so many typos in the code examples. Ofthen they will not even compile, comments are misleading, and text describing them is insufficient or wrong.

Also, when they are discussing something that I already know (like threads), I can see that the explanations are bad. They are not necessarily wrong, they just lack the necessary context for the reader to understand what is being said. Without that context, what is said is actually wrong at times.

After two chapters, I gave up adding corrections when I saw an error. After three, I stopped saying "No!" when I found something that was actually wrong.

I have stopped reading after the RMI section, because I found the Sun description to be better. Maybe the remaining chapters can redeem the book, but I doubt it.

I think it could be a good book, but it needs thorough review, and it should have been done before publication. The quality simply isn't good enough to warrent the price.

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This book is not enough to pass SCJD
However, after I got the assignment from SUN, I found I can't pass SCJD only by using this book because this book just gave me a rough idea and rough sample code about what is SCJD. I bought and read the book for SCJD. To successfully pass SCJD, I recommand you go to javaranch. com with this book.

Not worth the money. Get the info online.
I think that it's a terrible book. Where is the Zero star option when you need it?!? I bought this book because I read reviews and some recommendations from people here. Let me explain: the examples given and metaphors are just plain horrible, and it gets more confusing trying to follow what the author had in mind than learning from Sun online docs. It's full of typos and mistakes. Spelling checker anyone? The explainations of NIO are not requested by the exam so another useless topic in the book that I suspect was added to populate the volume and justify a higher price. The topic on lock on records which is very important and appears in every exam given by Sun is not described in much details neither. The index at the end is just useless (so many words are missing. ) Most chapters are not related to the exam (why is there a thread chapter in there since you are supposed to have learned that from the K&B book for the Prog exam already?) I found so much more info in the archives of the JavaRanch forum and for free, that I would advice everyone to do the same and browse this wonderful Web site instead of wasting trees and your money on that book as I unfortunatly did.