I’m sitting another Sun* Certification exam tomorrow to become a Sun Certified Web Component Developer (SCWCD). I’ve done a bit of revising but I’m writing this post mainly as a way to procrastinate. I should take more exams really if only as a way to get other things done. Procrastination during my final year of uni enabled me to learn how to speedsolve a Rubik’s Cube.
I’ve just read the study guide for the SCWCD exam; Head First Servlets and JSP. 
It’s quite long, and pretty good at sending you to sleep in the evening, but as programming books go, it’s good in the sense you can just read it without being sat at a computer.
I made a list of mistakes I spotted whilst reading the book almost like a game that made sure I read it thoroughly. O’Reilly offer a page for people to submit errata for this book but to be honest, I can’t be bothered. They should give people free books as a reward. Maybe if I mention the name “Kathy Sierra” in this post, she’ll find this from Google and post me a book herself 😉
p140 – in bullet 6 it should be “mostly”
p315 – It says only four attributes are on the exam, but if so, it’s not clear which four.
p555 – an design principle
p557 – the size attribute disappears
p580 – directional quote marks are a problem throughout the book but the sample code in question 3 tries to concatenate a String that contains un-escaped quotes that can only end in tears.
p587 – valid uses of these tags
p590 – answer E is ticked even though it is incorrect.
p598 – the reason for Q17 option D is just badly phrased.
p599 – I don’t remember reading anything about the “variable” directive, did I fall asleep at that bit or have a got a page missing?!
p654 – A Brew Master gets special descounts
p677 – Missing T – CLIENT-CERT
p694 – Q1, option C has a space in front of it. This isn’t the only example in the book either
p710 – The book randomly applies ligatures for adjacent F and I characters. Annoyingly however, it does this in the “courier new” code examples which is chosen because it is a fixed width font. Blending F and I into a single charater width looks really strange to me. I picked p710 as an example because the first line doesn’t use a ligature, but the first bullet point does.
p747 – other client components
p777 – in the bottom right, the sentence doesn’t count all 5 jars
p787 – I don’ remember there being any talk of the Composite Delegate pattern in this book
Well, that kept me busy for a few minutes, I better take the mock exam and see how badly I’m going to fail this exam…
*I’m sure the Sun certification exams will be deprecated by Friday by a bigwig in Oracle towers.