Finally passed the Java 17 developer certification on my second attempt - after 1 year

Finally got the Java 17 developer certification on my second attempt - after 1 year. Thank you, Jesus! I scraped through with 68%.

Thanks to this community which helped me keep my sanity after a job loss due to an abusive manager and her director, one year ago. It has been a very difficult year.
I am grateful to all who patiently answered my questions and helped me learn: Stefan U., Mike S. Paul C, Ron M, Mikhail, Tim H, Campbell R., Simon R, Jeanne B, Ira G, Paul A.

Opinion: I am sad at the state of Java today and believe it has lost touch with the "common man" aka, the average developer.
The API is bloated and complicated.
It reminds me of the Renaissance period in Europe which produced intricate sculpture, architecture and paintings.
Beautiful art, but did not benefit the common man.
No longer the Main Thing, today it is just a small component in an ecosystem to take a program from algorithm to Cloud.
I am dreaming of a new programming language called "Tea", a subset of Java 17. I am convinced it is the only way back for Java.

Resources I used:
1) Boyarsky-Selikoff Java 17 Study Guide - I highly recommend. It is excellent.
2) Enthuware mock exams. I highly recommend. The questions are NOT the same as the real exam but they helped **a lot**.
To give you an indicator, I scored only 50-60% on the mock tests.
3) Boyarsky-Selikoff Java 17 Practice Tests - I do NOT recommend. I wasted months on it and regret it.
They tried to make it harder than the real exam (as the author says), but in the end, it was in effect, for a different exam.
4) I attended Simon Roberts Java certification class one year ago on O'Reilly and the notes I wrote were useful. (but the subscription is now too expensive at $500/year).

Congratulations Anil !
   

Congratulations, Anil!  Glad to hear all the hard work has paid off.  Well done!

Mikalai Zaikin wrote:Congratulations Anil !
   

Thanks for your help. The "binary search on an unsorted list" question is still there, but as part of a series of questions.
For a number of questions, they made it so each System.out.print() produces one output string and they concat all the outputs so that in effect, they are asking a number of questions in one.

Mike Simmons wrote:Congratulations, Anil!  Glad to hear all the hard work has paid off.  Well done!

I am grateful to you for patiently answering my questions.

Congratulations Anil, there's no doubt the exam is challenging, and you should be rightfully proud that you got through it. I'm also very pleased that you found my course useful. And yes, the subscription worries me too. I'm thinking of creating a training channel of my own with a finer granularity of payment terms. I'm not really sure exactly what that might look like yet, but there has to be a way to do this sensibly that still allows meaningful interaction with an instructor. Bah, anyway, this is about you, not me--congrats again and good luck moving forward with your career!

Cheers,
Simon

Congratulations, Anil  and thank you for your feedback  
Happy to know our material was helpful in your preparation  

Big congratulations!! We made it. Hard work really pays off. Whats now your plan after passing the exam?

Congratulations, well deserved. I'm glad we could help you on your path, even if we don't see eye to eye on the present state of Java.

What's next for you?

Stephan van Hulst wrote:Congratulations, well deserved. I'm glad we could help you on your path, even if we don't see eye to eye on the present state of Java.

What's next for you?

Job hunting and also I want to try out an idea to make streams easier to debug.

Simon Roberts wrote:Congratulations Anil, there's no doubt the exam is challenging, and you should be rightfully proud that you got through it. I'm also very pleased that you found my course useful. And yes, the subscription worries me too. I'm thinking of creating a training channel of my own with a finer granularity of payment terms. I'm not really sure exactly what that might look like yet, but there has to be a way to do this sensibly that still allows meaningful interaction with an instructor. Bah, anyway, this is about you, not me--congrats again and good luck moving forward with your career!

Cheers,
Simon

@Simon, Usually, tech celebrities do not waste their time on "small fry".
It is rare yet heartwarming to find someone of your stature taking time out to encourage and answer questions!

You're far too kind Anil. While I'm flattered by your designation, I'm just a teacher--if I didn't try my best to build understanding and confidence in the mainstream programming community I would have no value at all.

Regardless, your kind words have brought me a smile for the day, it's nice to feel I might have made a difference. Thank you

Congratulations, Anil! And Good Luck with your job hunting!

Congrats!

Congratulations! This is giving me hope as I've been studying for months but get disheartened when doing the practice questions in the OCP Study guide

Chazza Light wrote:Congratulations! This is giving me hope as I've been studying for months but get disheartened when doing the practice questions in the OCP Study guide

You need to look at your own situation. Do you really need this Java certification? How about an easier one. How many years of Java experience do you have after college. It is a long and hard certification unless you are a very intelligent person and bright at academics. Furthermore it is not valued that much in the job market I think. Even the people who interview is for jobs I observed, have no clue about many of the topics including Java 8 lambdas and streams.

Anil Philip wrote:. . . . It is a long and hard certification unless you are a very intelligent person and bright at academics. . . .

That should read, “It is a long and hard certification full stop” The exam is by no means easy.

You probably need an exam to show that you have studied what you need to know. Otherwise it is like going for a job as a taxi driver and asking, “Do I need a driving licence?” Once they know you have passed some exam or other, they will forget it and look at your other experience. Obviously a degree will do as well as an exam. Maybe better. And as for interviewers knowing what they are talking about, that is a different story.