Java certification?

Jimmy King

So, first some quick background. I dropped out of college many years ago, back in the olden times of 1999. I have since worked my way up to being a Sr Perl Developer at a small company through a lot of hard work, self study, personal projects, etc. I'm good at what I do, but I am lacking the formal education, which I'm sure does have some level of negative effect on my development skills when it comes to algorithms, optimization, etc. Perl is also problematic. While I love Perl and think it's a damn fine language to write many things in, there's fuck all for Perl work locally even when the economy isn't completely screwed.

The most obvious choice for me to move to is Java. It's common locally, it's primarily used (at least locally) in Unix/Linux environments where I've already got a lot of experience. I've done a little Java work on my own, but I'm certainly no expert. I've been told by other local developers who are good friends who make a lot more money than I do that getting Java certified is going to be the way to go.

So, where do I start? I looked at Sun's site about Java certification. I looked on Amazon for study books recently and there was only one. I have no idea if it was any good or not. Are there any specific books any of you can recommend?

jclast

If there is C/C++/C# work to be had near you the syntax leap from Perl to C if pretty short. I don't know about the book you mentioned, but language certification (at least those that I'm aware of) won't get you algorithm knowledge, just ins and outs of the programming language expertise. Stuff like knowing that you don't need to write your own hash tables in Perl, for example.

The Sun Website wrote:

The Sun Certified Programmer for Java Platform, Standard Edition 6 certification exam is for programmers experienced using the Java programming language. Achieving this certification provides clear evidence that a programmer understands the basic syntax and structure of the Java programming language and can create Java technology applications that run on server and desktop systems using Java SE 6.

This makes me think that once you've got a handle on the syntax you'd be able to pass the SCJP exam.

Hatch

I think C# is just as valuable as Java around here but it all depends on the direction you want to go. If you have been making Perl work for you thus far you will certainly do fine with either!

Jimmy King

jclast wrote: »

If there is C/C++/C# work to be had near you the syntax leap from Perl to C if pretty short. I don't know about the book you mentioned, but language certification (at least those that I'm aware of) won't get you algorithm knowledge, just ins and outs of the programming language expertise. Stuff like knowing that you don't need to write your own hash tables in Perl, for example.

Oh, yeah, I can jump languages just fine. I write in C occasionally, I've got a couple projects in Java that I work on just for fun, and occasionally have to do some emergency maintenance on legacy C# code here at work since we fired all of the C# developers.

The Sun Website wrote:

The Sun Certified Programmer for Java Platform, Standard Edition 6 certification exam is for programmers experienced using the Java programming language. Achieving this certification provides clear evidence that a programmer understands the basic syntax and structure of the Java programming language and can create Java technology applications that run on server and desktop systems using Java SE 6.

This makes me think that once you've got a handle on the syntax you'd be able to pass the SCJP exam.[/QUOTE]Good point there, I probably can. I like having some sort of actual study guide to work from, though, when I can.

Jimmy King

Hatch wrote: »

I think C# is just as valuable as Java around here but it all depends on the direction you want to go. If you have been making Perl work for you thus far you will certainly do fine with either!

Certainly, possibly more valuable around these parts. I prefer working on the Unix/Linux side of things, though, and while C# can be done in that evironment, no one does it.

Lewisham

The Man likes you to be Java certified, for some reason, so I'd go for it.

The people in my old company said the certification was hard, but then they were also incompetent, so I wouldn't take that as meaning anything.

Judging from your posts here in H&A, I think you're more than up to it JK, so I'd just learn the language, take a practice test and see what happens.

Jimmy King

Thanks for the words of encouragement guys. It's good to know I don't just stand out as some idiot. Does anyone have any recommendations on books to study with? I realize for the first test it's probably not really necessary, but I do find it easier to just sit down and read and study with a proper book.

As to the difficulty, is it possible they were talking about a higher level test? There are a bunch of tests involved for different levels of certification, like everyone does. I took some practice test for one of them, I remember it as being the entry level one, but the questions don't really fit the description of "basic syntax and structure" which was asking pretty detailed questions about planning, GoF design patterns, etc. with tricky bs questions that were difficult because there were 4 answers which were a short paragraph each with only 1 or 2 words different in each one. If the real tests are anything like that, then yeah, I can see even perfectly intelligent people finding them a bit rough.

Lewisham

Saying the GoF to these people would have resulted in confused looks.

As would design patterns.

As did Extreme Programming.

As did my horror when I found out they had a 5000 line PL/SQL statement that wasn't commented, had no functions, was mission-critical to paying millions of New Zealand Dollars, and they thought that was OK.

You are not those people