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O'Reilly Now Competing With Sun Java Certificates

Posted by timothy on from the sunday-school-ribbons dept.

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."

4 of 44 comments (clear)

  1. I don't know... by i+kan+reed · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "I took a class." can be even more easily abused than, "I passed a test." for posing false technical capability. Maybe not though. The market is definitely flooded with people using certifications to mean "ability." I hope this mitigates the problem rather than continuing it.

  2. Have you taken a SCJP exam? by MikeRT · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I took one earlier this year. It was primarily good for testing my ability to regurgitate information about the language and APIs. That's it.

    If I were an employer, I would give much more credence to someone coming in as an entry level hire or switching from another language if they had something like this. Lab-based, graded courses show that you have at least some practical ability to apply the material.

    In hindsight, I agree with a professor of mine who said that a single, solid A in a 400-level CS class is probably worth more than any programming certification starting out. If you want to do this on the cheap, just take a few classes at a community college. That's what I'm doing to get some "official training" to back up the fact that I do know C# well enough to make the switch from Java. One or two audited courses will have the same effect, but cost me less than $300 and I'll only have to do a few homework assignments and exams :)

    1. Re:Have you taken a SCJP exam? by pinkstuff · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I believe that is the idea - SCJP is about memorising the facts, and the SCJD is about testing the application of that knowledge. I know that when I sat the SCJP I did pickup some things that I never new even with my industry experience, so IMHO it is worth while.

  3. Re:Good, the Java Certificate is useless by sixtwentytwo94 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I work for O'Reilly and I can definitely say we didn't design this program to compete with some test. It's was designed to compete with Universities.