Finally got the
Java 17 developer certification on my second attempt - after 1 year. Thank you, Jesus! I scraped through with 68%.
Thanks to this community which helped me keep my sanity after a job loss due to an abusive manager and her director, one year ago. It has been a very difficult year.
I am grateful to all who patiently answered my questions and helped me learn: Stefan U., Mike S. Paul C, Ron M, Mikhail, Tim H, Campbell R., Simon R, Jeanne B, Ira G, Paul A.
Opinion: I am sad at the state of Java today and believe it has lost touch with the "common man" aka, the average developer.
The API is bloated and complicated.
It reminds me of the Renaissance period in Europe which produced intricate sculpture, architecture and paintings.
Beautiful art, but did not benefit the common man.
No longer the Main Thing, today it is just a small component in an ecosystem to take a program from algorithm to Cloud.
I am dreaming of a new programming language called "Tea", a subset of Java 17. I am convinced it is the only way back for Java.
Resources I used:
1) Boyarsky-Selikoff Java 17 Study Guide - I highly recommend. It is excellent.
2) Enthuware mock exams. I highly recommend. The questions are NOT the same as the real exam but they helped **a lot**.
To give you an indicator, I scored only 50-60% on the mock tests.
3) Boyarsky-Selikoff Java 17 Practice Tests - I do NOT recommend. I wasted months on it and regret it.
They tried to make it harder than the real exam (as the author says), but in the end, it was in effect, for a different exam.
4) I attended Simon Roberts Java certification class one year ago on O'Reilly and the notes I wrote were useful. (but the subscription is now too expensive at $500/year).