Yearning for Sun Certified Java 2 Programmer

Question

Hello all Java ppl out there.
I have been programming in Java for about 3 years now. A few months back I sat for this exam but failed by 2 points. Hence I was very disheartened and told myself not to get myself certified again. Recently I've been thinking about this certification and was thinking if I should re-sit again because I would very much want to be certified. Its a kind of achievement in my life. But how do you think I can improve my programming skills? The way the exam test is like I have to think like the Java interpreter!!!! Most of the time I rely on the compiler to tell me my mistakes!!!!
Those who sat for the exam, can you tell me how I can improve or what good materials I can read? I'm more of a hands-on kind of person and is weakest in I/O operations and GUI.

Answer 1

It gives you a quite good understanding about the java language. Even though you have years of experience, you would still learn something new by reading that book, unless you have really studied the Java Language Specification.
It's not something you would normally think about because you just let the compiler check if your code can compile, and then you test your program to see if it works as expected. A lot of the questions are like that as you have already seen. :)