With at least a dozen books on SCJP in the market, a question
naturally arises is to why add one more? The Java certification assesses the
conceptual knowledge and is not similar to academic or theoretical
examinations. Hence purely academic
approach may not work well for the exam. Therefore while following the SCJP
syllabus, sufficient efforts must be put in to get true understanding of essential
java concepts. There are many excellent books on SCJP and they are good
enough for readers who know Java quite well. However they may be bit confusing
for Java beginners. Since SCJP exam is particularly popular among Java
beginners, this is an important issue. The SCJP Handbook tries to be different-
While focusing on SCJP objectives—the assessment of important core Java
concepts—it goes one step further—to discuss the concepts themselves. When I started preparing for SCJP I knew only as much Java as
needed for my work. Preparation for SCJP gave me an opportunity to experiment
with several other interesting aspects of Java (threads for instance) and to
learn “Java-as-a-language” from scratch. But while doing so I had gone through
several books to truly get the picture of many Java concepts. It made me think
to write a book on SCJP. I wrote this book because this was the book that I
wanted to read when I started my SCJP preparation. I hope to make this book a
one-stop-solution for SCJP.
Preface