Cisco Networking Academy Program Fundamentals of Java Programming Engineering Journal and Workbook

Rating:
Summary: Questions that really make you think about Java
Review: The best material that can be used in preparing for a certification exam is that which forces you to think about the subject in ways that you have not considered before. I have been teaching Java programming for nearly ten years and there were many questions in this book that really forced me to think hard about the language before I answered them. While it is certainly possible to answer most of them after due consideration, there were some where the topic had never crossed my mind. My favorite in that category is on page 98, where the question involves the legality of having more than one static initializer in a class. A close second was one concerning the order that listeners are called when there is more than one assigned to a component.
Each section begins with a very short summary of the topic, followed by a set of concept questions where the expectation is that the reader write a short essay answer. This is followed by a set of vocabulary exercises, where the reader is to write the definition of the word or phrase. There is a section called the challenge lab section, which contains problems where the solution is to be coded, and then a section of focus questions. While they have a multiple choice format, more than one answer is possible and the differences between the answers can be quite subtle. Most of them are code analysis problems, where you are to identify either what is wrong with the code or what it will produce when run.
In reading this book and trying some of the examples, I learned more about the basics of Java than I have in reading any other book in the last five years. It is an excellent way to prepare for certification exams, the coverage of the basics of Java is complete, provided you think hard enough about the problems. If you solve all the problems in this book, you will be ready for almost anything.