good but could be lighter and more concise, please revise
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This a good book but not a great book. I passed the SCJP 5 exam after using this book and practicing using WhizzLabs mock exams which I would also recommend and found very necessary.
The book could be at least 100 pages lighter simply by not repeating the exercise questions in the answers section after each chapter. Cheesy attempts to lighten up the book with humour were just plain irritating, waste of paper and should be removed. The extra weight is not forgiven when you've lugged the book around in a laptop bag on a train. Less is definitely more. Having said that the end of chapter questions are very thought provoking and really do test your understanding. I would say these questions are generally harder than the exam but very good preparation.
There are two monster chapters (ch6 97 pages and ch7 114 pages) which really should be split up. These each took me over 5 hours to work through and I then had to go through them again after failing my first mock exam. The introductory sections on Generics was overdone and confusing and it would have been better to concentrate on the correct use and legal syntax rather than trying to justify and explain how they got added to the Java Language spec.
The mock exam that comes with the book is a pain to use. The screen size is too small and you end up spending too much time scrolling to read the code and possible answers. Having said that the questions are representative of the level in the exam.
With these caveats I would recommend the book and having looked at others, I suspect it is probably the best on the market at the current time.
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Passed easily with this book
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Achieved score of over 90% in my SCJP exam using this book alone. Didn't even use the CD - found the book's content and practice questions sufficient. The book is extremely thorough and well written, even mildly amusing in places which helps when some of the topics are such heavy going. Highly recommend to anyone preparing for the SCJP exam - it's all you'll need!
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It got me through!!!
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I seriously recommend this book. It depends on your experience how hard you will have to study it but I passed my exam today and that is really the point isn't it. I found the book easy going and the practise questions and practise exams on the CD were really helpful. I do think that you have to understand that reading won't be enough, you actually have to write programs and the more you write the better you will do.
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could do better
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As probably already mentioned in lots of other reviews, yes, this is written by the people who write the exam, yes it does contain all the topics in the exam and yes it does contain a whole raft of jokes that aren't funny, spoil the flow of the book and should be removed.
What people seem to ignore is that the book in parts is very good but in other parts it is dreadful. It is supposed to be teaching everything about the exam but it is ambiguous, there are large chunks of vital information that is missed, and some chapters only describe the finer points of chapter's topic in the answer to the end of chapter lesson after you get it wrong because it wasn't described anywhere else!
If I could go back, I'd buy a different book that was purely for the SCJP.
One other thing to bare in mind, this book won't teach you java; it will teach you some core java concepts, but mostly it will teach you about all the things you don't need to know, will never use and let you know how to try and spot errors that you shouldn't have to spot. But, that is what the SCJP exam is about, not knowing about Java, rather knowing about stuff that's irrelevant! So in that respect, the book is a necessity as only the authors of the exam know how daft the questions they've created are - which begs the question - is the exam as it is so that they could get this book published, or is the book a response to the exam?
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Complete and fun to read
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This book addressed all the topics that I got questioned on on the exam ... moreover, it was also fun to read, and that is an achievement for a certification study guide. By working through the self-test and taking the supplied mock exam, I scored 92% on the exam.
If I ever have to look for another certification guide, I'll take one from the same series !
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