This last Friday I took the Sun Certified Java Programmer exam (Java 5 edition). I am going to talk about the experience, what I would have done differently and why it will end up mattering.

So just how hard is the SCJP? Instead of phrasing it in some vague way, I’m going to tell you what I did and how it all worked out for me. For starters, I studied for about 25 hours over the course of 10 days before my exam. I would say that having 18 months of Java experience did not help much. I also took 2 practice tests but they weren’t as helpful as I would’ve liked. However, I do still highly recommend reading the SCJP Study Guide by Sierra and Bates. It was fairly thorough and contained many helpful tips. Continue reading →

1. Don’t create prototypes

Clients do not know what they want. Managers do not know what they want. When you prototype, you learn about the constraints you are going to face and your audience learns what they can have and what is impossible. NOTE: Try not to use your prototypes for production code, they are meant to be prototypes. Learn from them and don’t just….

2. Copy the code

When you copy code one of these scenarios is likely to occur: either you don’t fully understand what it does or you may know but don’t think about refactoring it to be better because you expect it to just work. I know many of you out there see this all day long: someone copies code because they are lazy and don’t correctly create an abstraction, and they end up violating the DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) principle. Now when rules change, you have multiple pieces of code to change. Unfortunately, it seems that people who copy code also tend to believe that they should…
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Here is a list of productivity add-ons for Firefox. These are NOT just for programmers. These are split up into 4 groups: Keyboard, Mouse, Upgrade Firefox features, and Google. Did I miss any? What do you use to make you more productive?

Enhance your keyboard (mouse-less browsing)

• Hit-A-Hint – This add-on allows you to click links to interact with form inputs as seen in the screenshot. Just hit “H” and then the letters that correspond to the object you want to click
• Keyconfig – Configure keyboard shortcuts for pretty much everything all in one place. A staple of mouse-less browsing
• functions for keyconfig – This adds additional shortcuts for things such as Tab Focusing, Frame Focusing, Copy URL, and a lot more
• Surfkeys – Make surfing super easy with a keyboard. Sets shortcuts keys for many common browsing tasks (Back, Scrolling, Stop…). Using keyconfig is a must so you can configure these keys, but it is soooo worth it :)

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