Been there, done that, got the stick pin. I’m now officially a Java Certified Programmer - and I’ve got the card to prove it! It was certainly a fun exam, and it took me the whole two hours just to get the thing finished. I probably should have studied harder, but hey, I passed, and I’m very happy. Also learned a lot more than any man should about scope rules relating to inner classes, and more esoteric uses of the wait()/notify() calls.
The kicker is that I actually did this cert just to put the logo on my Business Card (hey, our company is called Bytecode, it would be nice to have a Java logo on it!). To actually use the logo, however, I’ve got to sign a strict license agreement which, in part, requires me to also place the following phrase on my card under the logo:
The Sun Certified Professional Logo is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Now, I’m all for protecting your brand, but come on, we’re talking a lot of card real estate here. There’s also rules on where on your card the logo can be placed, how big it must be (“it must appear smaller than your name and personal information combined”). Serious! Looks like I’ll be sticking with the Bytecode dog!
I still highly recommend the certification deal. Probably won’t get you a job, and it’s probably not even that good measure of your technical skill (I reckon about 50% are “trick” questions - where the most natural answer is actually wrong because of some subtle complexity/variable shadowing/omission of a break; or whatever) - but it is stretching, and does get you familiar with some less used features of the language (ask me about signed and unsigned bit shifting operators. Go on. Anything. I dare you!).