Sun Certified Programmer & Developer for Java 2 Study Guide (Exam 310-035 & 310-027) [Paperback]

If the above is not enough to convince you, then two of the questions from my exam where almost identical to questions I got in my exam, one regarding arrays with dog names such as "Fido", etc.

By this book, read it, understand it, do the sample exam, pass the real exam, it really is that straight forward.

Having spent three weeks reading Part I (The Programmer Exam) I took the exam and passed with a score of 95%. I think that speaks for itself.

I can't comment on Part II (The Developer Exam) because I have only browsed through it, although if it's up to the same standard as the first part I'm sure it will be of great use when the time comes.

I can, however, speak with authority about Part I having read it word for word, and taken the Self Tests at the end of each chapter. I chose this particular book over its competitors primarily because it was the most recently published, and also because I got the impression that other 1.4 study guides were hastily rehashed versions of the earlier 1.2 (310-025) versions. That's not to say that I think this tome was put together any less hastily, judging by the number of mistakes I found. However on the whole the mistakes are minor and in some ways I treated them as a "did you spot the deliberate mistake" exercise. The publishers do, however, maintain a detailed erratum on their web site, to which I will be adding a few observations. Having said that, I did find the book easy to read and the Self Test questions useful. The questions supplied on the accompanying CD were very useful and representative of those on the exam. It was well worth downloading the complementary second set of questions. One slight annoyance with the Master Exam software was its inability to be resized, forcing you to scroll some questions up and down to see all of a code excerpt. In that respect it was not representative of the real exam. "Practice makes perfect" as they say, and in this case I think that adage is especially true.

As for the coverage of subject matter, the only facet of core Java I noticed to be missing was initializer blocks. I'm not sure whether this is deliberate (because they aren't explicitly mentioned in the certification objectives) or just an oversight. I liked the format of the book, with sections for each of the exam objective, and a so called "Two-Minute Drill" at the end of each chapter, listing, as bullet points, all the important details. I could almost have managed without taking notes because these "Two-Minute Drills" often just reiterated what I had noted; but, never the less, they gave me a comforting reassurance that I was on the right track. And then when you think you've learned it all the questions at the end of each chapter make you realise how wrong you can be.

All in all an excellent study guide that I'd recommend to anyone planning to take the Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform 1.4 exam.

I read the Sybex book first and doubted whether I needed to actually read this book, however, once I started I found that the content was far more constructive, intuative and helpful than the Sybex book had been.

This book covers many topics in more detail than is needed for the exam but which gives you a solid foundation on all the subjects. I am an experienced Java developer but the book still pointed out intricate details which even I was not aware of.

Buy This Book !!!!