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Written by Chintan Rajyaguru
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Sunday, 24 July 2005 |
This blog entry is in response to a discussion at
Javaranch
I have not read any of the HeadFirst books but I do think certification books in general are good learning resources. Many authors cover the certification material anyway; certifications book authors explicitly mention that and organize their books keeping in mind the objectives of the exam.
The “you don't need to learn xyz because it is not in exam” argument is a way of controlling the scope, which every book does in one form or another.
I strongly believe it is up to the reader to decide what he/she expects out of "a" book. As long as the book clarifies its objective (introductory, tailored to certifications etc.), it has done its job and now the ball is in the reader's court. Guy1/Guy2 scenario (on the discussion), if true, would only hurt the developer who passed the exam without really understanding the topics.
Do books make it easier to pass the exam (and hence contribute to the diminishing of the value of the exam)? This is debatable. I think partly it is Sun's responsibility to come up with questions such that only experienced developers could pass the exam. As far as the career goes, showing that you have passed the exam is not going to help on its own. Today’s competitive market looks for a package of skills. Do you have a certification, do you have specific experience (with the exact tools and environment), are you affordable, do you understand the business (only then you would know how technology could solve it) are all important questions every developer should ask.
Finally, IMHO, certification exams still don’t cover real world issues. Knowing APIs is not enough, many SCWCDs can’t even set up eclipse projects, Tomcat and a plugin to create development environment for a web project let alone "decision making" around using all these technologies (EJB or POJO, JDO or Hibernate, JSTL or Struts tags and much more). |
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