Rating: 
Summary: A great primer for writing the exam!
Review: I passed the exam with 88%, going into the exam with only about one year of programming experience on my own. This book filled in all the gaps I had in my knowlege of Java. The sample code sprinkled through the book really helps to understand the concepts, something I found missing in other books I compared this with. The best part of the book are the sample questions. There are about 20 per chapter, and the book not only explains why the answers are correct, but why the other answers are incorrect! This helped me enormously, and I only wish more books did this. This book is really excellent if you need to do some brushing up before the exam. I can't recomend this book enough.One thing I would recommend to the authors is more in depth coverage of Strings. Strings are handled differently by the compiler depending on whether or not they are instantiated (using "new") or declared as a literal. Although some sample questions tested this, I didn't find an explanation of this difference in the book.
Rating: 
Summary: A Good Study Guide
Review: First of all, I recommend this book as a good study guide, not an exam prep., here's why:
-It has many extra material and thorough explanations, although I think this is the only way to preserve its integrity.
-EVERYTHING I encountered on the exam was covered in the book.
-It is well-organized and nicely formatted.
-Questions at the end of chapters very closely simulate real questions on the exam.
If you thoroughly read AND study the book, you cannot fail on the exam.
But, like all things, it's not perfect:
-First of all, bundled software doesn't work in all cases for some reason. That's a fact. If you don't like playing russian rulette and really need a practice exam, try another book or purchase practice exams from Sun. I passed the exam without practice, but I was unpleasantly surprised. I took off one star just for that.
-Secondly, a few questions contain material not thoroughly explained in chapters.
-In several places important detais are missing. For example, I had to guess that it's also legal to pass a File object to a FileInputStream constructor, the author mentioned only String.
-A couple of errors in practice questions answers.
-Some rude proofreading errors. How can an experienced programmer make a mistake in the truth table for XOR ?!
-I also found one screaming error which appears to be not of a proofreading type: the author claims that arc sine, arc cosine, and arc tangent are mathematical functions that take an angle as an argument. Apparently, him and the editors need to brush up on their math. Generally, the book is good, if not to consider potential problems with the software. Use it as your main study guide, supplement it with some other materials, and you will not be sorry.
Rating: 
Summary: Worked for me!
Review: I started with the first Stanek edition which had too many errors and weak treatment of some important subjects. I found this book at a Java conference. I found it to be well organized, well written and learned a lot from it. There were a few errors and some an annoying inconsistency in the discussion of threads but nothing of any significant consequence -- I passed the exam easily on the first try. One of the things I like most was that the more challenging self test questions were more difficult than those I had encountered on the exam. Most of the questions in the self tests were very close to what I saw in the exam. The part I like least was the CD. It had most of the same questions as the book. After the first two chapters I gave up the CD and went back plain old pencil and paper. The reason I gave it four stars is that the book isn't perfect and I didn't really benefit from the CD.
Rating:
Summary: I look it very interesting, but i don't see anything
Review: I not yet see this book, because i haven't read it
Rating: 
Summary: Maybe the next edition will be usable?
Review: This book seems to have been rushed into production; it desperately needs a revised second printing. As it stands, however, there are just too many errors and misstatements for it to be taken seriously. Also, the topics are somewhat out of line with the questions on the exam. Finally, a tough blow for people who are studying hard for the Sun Certified Java Programmer exam: in nearly every one of the practice tests at the ends of the book's chapters, one or more of the book's suggested answers to their own test questions are simply wrong, wrong, wrong. If this book's practice exams give you high marks, you probably will not do very well on the actual exam. If I hadn't switched over to the Sybex book, I probably would have failed the exam, but I passed it the first time. However, it cost me a week or so of finding and unlearning all the misinformation that I had already absorbed. So I recommend avoiding that.
Rating:
Summary: Good book tarnished by errors
Review: What I like about the book:
- Writing style, each to follow, good examples
- End of chapter summaries (a few diagrams would help)
- End of chapter exam with answers (good measure of progress)
- Simulated exam (although I would like more that than just one test) What I did not like about the book
- Errors in text of book, - way to many of them
- Errors in end of chapter exams, - again way to many
- Errors in simulated exam (had the least errors once the update was applied) If the publisher could get the errors fixed, this would be a great book. Web site has an update for the simulated exam (still has errors), but I could not find anything for the text or end of chapter exams. Accuracy is a must when you are buying a book to study and pass an exam for certification.
Rating:
Summary: Good book tarnished by errors
Review: What I like about the book:
- Writing style, easy to follow, good examples
- End of chapter summaries (a few diagrams would help)
- End of chapter exam with answers (good measure of progress)
- Simulated exam (although I would like more that than just one test) What I did not like about the book
- Errors in text of book, - way to many of them
- Errors in end of chapter exams, - again way to many
- Errors in simulated exam (had the least errors once the update was applied) If the publisher could fix the errors, this would be a great book. Web site has an update for the simulated exam (still had errors), but I could not find anything for the text or end of chapter exams. Accuracy is a must when you are buying a book to study to pass a java certification exam. Update: took the Sun Certified Programmer for Java 2 Platform 1.4 Examination on Oct 3rd, 2002 and passed.
Rating:
Summary: It does the job, well.
Review: I had ONE goal - to pass the certification exam. I had ONE book to study from - this book. And it did the job. It covered all the objectives for the exam. The questions at the end of chapters are a good shakedown to highlight your weaknesses. If you can notice each and every little typo, that's a compliment to the book, it has prepared you well enough to notice the right from wrong. All you need to pass this exam is: this book + mock exams (beyond what's available on the CD).
Rating:
Summary: The bad and the good
Review: This book definitely deserves a lot of the criticism levied against it for typos, mistakes, and inaccuracies. I had to constantly refer to the Java APIs for clarification. For example, to get the runtime environment, use Runtime.getRuntime() and not Runtime.getInstance() as specified on page 232 "on the job". Further, if you've already bought this book, you may want to find another reference for Java IO. This is the last chapter of the book and seems to be almost an after thought with a very poor flow. The Exam Simulator is unforgivable flawed with several incorrect answers :-O. On the positive side, I did like the authors writing style and other then IO, the author gives a fairly good treatment of the topics. This is the only book I used to study for the exam and I scored rather well. So, if the Author/Publisher had simply proof read this book, it would be a GREAT book instead of a FAIR/POOR not-worth-the money book.
Rating:
Summary: Do not depend only on this book
Review: Generally, the authors did a good job.However,many methods and interfaces that are being tested on the exam are not mentioned in this book. DO NOT TRUST the chapters written by Trent Heintz.
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