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Best Approaches for J2EE Certification?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the pssst!-can-I-peek-at-your-notes dept.

facetiousprogrammer writes "I have been working for several years at the same company. As part of the 2007 goal, my team is required to get the Brainbench J2EE certification. We have a good knowledge of the Java programming language itself but very little exposure to J2EE. Other teams in the company are using J2EE daily — hence the push for certification. What would be the best approach to be successful in getting the J2EE certification knowing that we won't work or get formal training on J2EE? Is it a desperate cause?"

6 of 46 comments (clear)

  1. Those who can, do. Those who can't, get certified by theangryfool · · Score: 5, Informative

    While I'm a fan of brainbench, I have to say that getting certified is of dubious value. We've been interviewing for a while and there is almost zero correlation between school, certification, and ability. If anything, there is almost a negative correlation between certification and ability. It's as if people who don't know what they are doing get a certification to offset that minor problem.

  2. Head First Servlets and JSP book by dougsyo · · Score: 2, Informative

    The book that helped make it clear to me (in spite of the at-first-simplistic style) is Head First Servlets and JSP by Basham, Sierra and Bates. The book makes a specific point of highlighting what will (and won't) be on the J2EE certification.

    TBH, you either love or hate the Head First books.

    Doug

  3. Why Brainbench? by cyranoVR · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why not get a Sun Certified Business Component Developer Certification instead?

  4. Re:Back in the day... by VGPowerlord · · Score: 2, Informative

    You mean, you didn't get the nasty email from they saying that all your certifications were null and void back in... 2001, I think it was?

    I did.

    --
    GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
  5. Those who can't teach themselves get a Comp Sci BS by cyranoVR · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I disagree. From personal experience, I've found that job applicants who are Sun Certified Java Programmers at least know Java syntax and SDK libraries. For those without the certification, you just have to hope they didn't get hired by bullshiting their way through the technical questions.

    Illustrative annecdote:

    Recently I had to work with a very bright Comp Sci graduate of a prestigious Ivy League school. He did well in the interview and professed to know Ruby, Lisp and Perl in addition to Java (which had been "coding since version 1.1"). He knew enough about OOP and patterns to sound like a Java expert and so we hired him. For his first project (a web application) he wrote the following bit of code:

    servletContext.setAttribute("SomeAttribute", "TRUE");
    When I asked him why he had used a String constant for true, he patiently explained that Java didn't have object versions of its primitives(!).

    I've seen this one from multiple un-certified Java programmers: what if getInvoiceDate() returns null?

    Date date = getInvoiceDate();
    String output = ""+amt;
    This is fine as long as your functional spec allows "null" as a valid value for output. Ours didn't. Oops!

    On large projects you don't have time to make every code review an impromptu "Java basics" tutorial. Knowing your team members have a Java Certification that guarantees they're not spending hours learning how to use (or re-implementing!) Integer, StringBuffer and HashMap. This can add a comfort level that makes a big difference in terms of team productivity.
  6. Re:Those who can, do. Those who can't, get certifi by bluebox_rob · · Score: 2, Informative

    If anything, there is almost a negative correlation between certification and ability. It's as if people who don't know what they are doing get a certification to offset that minor problem.

    Surely that would depend on what certification you are talking about? If someone gets a high score in, for example, the Sun Certified Java Programmer exam, then you at least know that they are familiar with many of the intricacies of the Java language, and a SCJD qualification means that they have written a networked Java system that has been gone through line-by-line by an examiner at Sun. No qualification is a rubber-stamp guarantee that someone will be a good fit for a job, but it can help narrow down the things you need to check for.