Why I will not upgrade my OCP Java SE certificate (1Z0–817 exam)
Disclaimer: This is my personal experience and your experience may be completely different.
Before explaining the reason for such a provoking story header, let me briefly tell you my personal background and attitude toward OCP certification.
I have been working with Java for more than 10 years and currently holding the OCP Java SE 8 Programmer certificate. My path to it was the following:
- Archive “Oracle Certified Professional, Java SE 6 Programmer” certificate (10-AUG-2011 — 1Z0–851 Exam)
- Upgrade to the “Oracle Certified Professional, Java SE 8 Programmer” title (25-MAY-2017 — 1Z0–813 Exam)
The main motivation for taking the exam was gaining a deep knowledge of the programming language that still with me during all this time.
And indeed I feel grateful for structuring my knowledge about a lot of topics and especially the following:
- Java Collection Framework and Exception Hierarchy (thanks to the OCP 6 Exam),
- new Date API, and Functional Principles (my unforgivable time with OCP 8 Exam)
Now let's talk about the negative aspects of the exam
Except the all the great aspect of preparation, I feel pretty annoyed with 2 types of questions:
- Question with broken code and the possible option “Compilation Error”
- Question about correct API signature
And those questions are the biggest challenge as you need to spend a lot of time mesmerizing API and analyzing the ugly code. That shows the more general problem: the questions (in most cases, of course) do not have a connection with real-world scenarios.
Let me explain my point: we do not live in a stone age anymore and, most likely, you will write code using the IDE tool that will show you the correct syntax of the API. And even if you are a hardcore programmer and write all your code using only the Notepad application you still use the compiler that will show you all the compilation errors. There is no point in analyzing the “ugly” code and trying to figure out whether it will compile or not. I simply do not do it in real life.
In the conclusion, I would be happier if the exam would have more practical questions and focus more on the fundamental concepts of the language. For instance, simply show the code with an already defined statement that ”it will not compile” and the goal is to choose the correct reason for it. Of course, it would simplify the exam, but in my opinion, that should be the main purpose of the certificate — make sure that a person fully understands what he can/cannot do with the language. There should not be a goal of checking if a person can compile the code “on-paper” or keeping the knowledge about all possible API signatures.
What about the upgrade exam to Java 11 SE
If we put all negative aspects aside and look into the upgrade certification path we will see that there is only one way of doing it: taking 1Z0–817 Exam. The price is $150. The previous upgrade exam (1Z0–813 Exam) had the same price. Based on my previous experience the exam preparation takes about one month.
Looking at the subject of the exam “Upgrade OCP Java 6, 7 & 8 to Java SE 11 Developer” you may find that it is the single exam for all cases: OCP 6–8.
I have OCP 6 and OCP 8 certificates so using the last one I would expect the following:
- the price would be lower (compared if I have only OCP 6)
- the scope is different for different cases (OCP6 — OCP8).
Unfortunately, both points are incorrect. After checking all official references I did not find any distinguishes between passing the exam with OCP 6 or OCP 8 certificate. You will still have topics like NIO.2 (my personal most hateful questions of all times:) and “Lambda Operations on Streams” that were present in the 1Z0–813 Exam.
It looks unfair. Why did I spend time and money for OCP 8 preparation if I would just skip it and upgrading directly to the OCP 11 using the OCP 6? Taking the same exam!
After some consideration, I personally decided to skip the certification. Using saved money you can buy a lot of books (including “Java 9 Modularity” book as the main topic of the upgrade exam).
In conclusion, I would say that the only thing that matters is the knowledge and not the badge of certification.
See you in the comments:)
