Anthony Dahanne’s blog

Three weeks ago I passed my Java certification, called the Sun Certified Programmer for Java 2 Platform 1.4 (CX-310-035).
My employer paid it for me (saved me 200 bucks!), all I had to do was to go to a Prometric certification centre and answer the questions (around 60, and you have 120 minutes to do that).
Why did it try to go and take this exam would you ask ? Well, because, even if I knew (a little) how to code Java before starting to study the exam, that was the perfect occasion to discover in-depth “basic” Java, and well, it sure strenghens my CV !
To pass the Programmer exam you must not have any doubts about java tricks, more particularly in these 9 “exam objectives” :

• Declarations and Access Control (even if you think you Know Java, you may still still have surprises!!)
• Flow control, Assertions, and Exception Handling (I learnt a lot !)
• Garbage Collection (short and easy)
• Language Fundamentals (a good exercise for your memory !)
• Operators and Assignments (implicit casting, = is different from “equal”, etc..)
• Overloading, Overriding, Runtime Type and Object Orientation (that’s what I call an object oriented language !)
• Threads (the tough part ! Dough !)
• The Collections Framework (still need to make some memory work !)

My method to pass this exam? I studied with this book : Sun Certified Programmer & Developer for Java 2 Study Guide, co-written by Kathy Sierra, one of the authors of the test questions.
I t really helped me, even if I didn’t follow all of her instructions point by point : she gives you the advice to work 15 minutes a day during 3 months, I worked 4 hours a day during 2 weeks !
The questions in this book (the mock tests) are really quite similar to the exam ones, so you won’t be surprised the day of the exam !
What next ? I’m now studying my the Sun Certified Web Component Developer for the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition 1.4 (CX-310-081), this exam is about JSP and servlets, my first step in the J2EE certification, whats appeals to me best.
Feel free to give me your advice about this certification !

Je reçois la semaine dernière un mel de DynDNS qui m’avertit que je n’ai pas remis à jour mon adresse IP depuis 35 jours…
Pourtant la redirection fonctionne et mon adresse ip est censée être dynamique puisque je suis abonné particulier chez 9 Telecom !
Et pourtant depuis maintenant plus de 40 jours mon adresse IP ne change plus, plus de déconnexion sauvage régulière, l’adresse IP a l’air d’être fixe (du moins quand on ne se déconnecte pas volontairement) !
J’en ai alors profité pour créer mon serveur DNS primaire, espérons que l’IP restera fixe !
Si vous êtes chez 9 Telecom venez témoigner vous aussi votre non renouvellement d’adresse IP !

Update ! (22 Août 2006)
L’IP a été renouvelée au bout de 50 jours environ… .

Sorry, but this post is not available in English. But it should be available in French