Funny, my brain had just clicked into "skim" mode when... hey that's my name!

I only took the initial "developer" exam. it's all multiple choice, in an examination room, where the other ones are more like "take home problems" which require working code and stuff, and explanations and justifications and such. Or something like that...the details are fuzzy, since I haven't actually tried it yet. I probably will someday, before they rearrange all the test again anyway.

My approach to the developer exam: buy the big blue study certification book. Read it slowly, when you get time. This should all be done while activly using Java in your daily life. With luck a couple of the things you read will make you think "Oh, that's why this looks this way, or how that works." Mostly it will help you understand the foundation on which java code, therefore your code, is built.

Continue your leisurely reading of the book, then have your local Sun Users Group invite one of the authors to speak! You know, you just KNOW, that you can't face them without having been certified with their book. Panic!

Suddenly the pressure will be on; you'll quickly read the last few chapters you hadn't finished yet. You signed up on a monday test. You are up half the night cramming. You skim chapter titles and take every exmaple question in every secton, eagerly reading the "why's" behind the answers.

At work the next day, you surriptiously page through the book, trying to accidentally sumble over enlightenment. You take the test. And you pass! It's a low score, but it's a passing score! You dance gleefully. You'd put in precisely enough work to pass the test, but no more. You read a book, spent a late night cramming like you were in college, and it worked.

I don't have as exciting a story about Eclipse, but I find it to be a handy tool. Folks also rave about IntelliJ, if you do have any money.