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O'Reilly Now Competing With Sun Java Certificates
Joel Aufgang writes "O'Reilly Media's O'Reilly School of Technology in partnership with the University of Illinois has just launched a Java Programming Certificate Series, which looks like it's intended to compete with the Sun Certified Java Programmer (SCJP) certification. According to O'Reilly's press release, this is not an exam-based certification but rather a series of project based instructor-led courses that, if you pass, earns certification backed by the University of Illinois. Also interesting is the use of Eclipse as the preferred learning platform as opposed to Netbeans."
Java Certification only proves you know how to answer trick questions. It's primarily just shows lines with several operators in it and you have to know which ones take priority.
The correct answer to most of the questions should be "This code is so horrible I would rewrite it to be clearer".
When hiring, I've found Java Certified people to be worse than the norm, in no way does it actually test your ability to program.
It's turtles all the way down.
What happened to jBuilder?
I use Netbeans at work extensively since about 5.5. Dependent projects, auto compiling java code from WSDL web services, debug to tomcat in one click. PHP integration now in 6.5. Rarely do I actually have to screw with the conf files as I had to do with eclipse. Worth a second look.
A good IDE is a productivity tool. It leverages computer power to make your job faster, via things like "Intellisense", drag & drop code, easy refactoring tools, visual tools, etc. It's unfortunate that these IDEs don't come with a "Power Slider" to let you control things like what get cached and what doesn't.
However, in your case, XP really sucks on one gig of RAM. I've seen VS 2005 take an entire gig just for large project. Remember, the IDE isn't trying to be a pig here, it's trying to cache all kinds of things in memory to make your job easier and faster. But your laptop is definitely a few years behind the curve. You're basically asking why your Power Drill isn't working very well with your AAA batteries.