Java 2 Certification Training Guide

I bought this book after I bought Exam Cram. Both books are good. I passed the certification today in the first try.

I was a "Java" novice (but an experienced programmer-analyst) when I bought this book in November 1999. The book looked good. Nice format. Good table of contents and index. Also it claimed to provide for the preparation of 3 certification exams. So, I though it was a good investment.

I bought it to prepare for the Programmer exam.

Like the other reviewers, I can say that there are a lot of typos, and also flaws in some answers to reviews and quizzes. Not to mention that some topics are "explained" very badly.

But two things irritated me most:

1. The exam simulator has a very akward interface. The questions take time to appear, and when you scroll to see the whole question and answers, it's awfully slow!

There are well over a hundred questions, and you have to go through all of them. Nothing to start at some question number, go back and then forth again... You can't even grab the text of the questions and answers so that you could read them, away from your computer. Cheap, I think.

2. Jaworski advise the reader not to take the exam unless he has reached a mark of 90%+. I was reaching a mark of 87% on his test, and reviewed it the morning (June 2000) that I was to take Sun's exam.

I thought I'd pass it in the 80%, but FAILED it a 64% mark.

Please save yourselves money and disappointments! Make a good internet research on the topic of Java Certification Exam, and read the reviews at Amazon.com before you consider buying such a book.

I have to agree with many of the reviewers. There are a lot of mistakes in this book and many of them are SERIOUSLY misleading. The support for this book is non-existant. There are no corrections posted on the website (as advertised) and there is no 'forum' for discussion (also advertised). My emails to the author have gone unanswered. Next time I'll read the reviews here first :(

Others have pointed out the egregious number of errors in this shoddily produced book.

I would just like to add that the errors are not all trivial typos, as some reviewers have asserted.

Basic points are omitted, for example the scoping of an ELSE in nested IF's, a standard pitfall of syntax, is nowhere discussed.

Worse, some subtler points are completely fluffed. For example, the answer to question 12 of Chapter 6 is exactly flat wrong: static inner classes *can* be instantiated. It looks as if the author has simply misunderstood what the static modifier means when used with inner classes, has explained them vaguely, and then failed his own exam.

Fellow student, your money is better spent elsewhere. I just wrote this one off as a loss, and taking the recommendation of a well-informed friend in the computer-book business, have bought Simon Roberts et al instead, which already looks a lot better.

And shame on New Riders for publishing this sloppy, shoddy book.

This is one of the few books I have seen that have unpardonable mistakes. Seems like no proofreading has been done, there are lot of mistakes in the questions itself and can lead to the programmer believing in wrong stuff. It all looks like the author wanted some quick money and finished this book without any concern for the customer.