As we mentioned recently, Oracle announced their new Java 21 Certification Exam 1Z0-830 this week. Scott passed first and wrote about his experience. Now I join the first few Oracle Certified Professional Java SE 21 Developer’s in the world.

Unlike Scott, who passed on the first attempt, it took me two tries. See my blog post from last week for why. Anyway, this time I passed with a 74%. I still had time pressure with only 10 minutes to review answers. (To be fair, it’s 9 days later; not enough time for Oracle to do anything with our feedback about length)

As we mentioned earlier last week, Oracle announced their new Java 21 Certification Exam 1Z0-830 this week. Scott passed on Friday and wrote about his experience. Today was my turn.

Changing my exam date

You have to wait five days to retake an exam. That would have been Saturday. however the exam is not offered on the weekend. So I registered for Monday. I then learned I needed to go into the office on Monday so got to learn how to reschedule the exam. It was very easy.l The exam registration email from Oracle has a link to reschedule. After that the form looks the same as booking originally where you choose a day and then a time. The Tuesday 7am slot wasn’t available by the time I knew Monday was no good so I switched to Wednesday at 7am.

Checking in

The blog post from last week . The proctor did not want to see my paper was blank. (While you don’t see the proctor’s name, zoom said it was proctor 8. Which is the same number as last time. So it might have been the same person.

The exam

Like last time, I had some very long questions. While a lot had a good amount of code to read, there were five where I had to scroll a ton. Those questions take a lot of time. I used the same techniques as last time with two extras:

• I used my cursor as a pointer as I was reading code. This got me to be more careful reading so I didn’t miss things.
• Thought in my head as if I was explaining to someone why I was ruling out choices. Again to force myself to be more careful.

Some of the questions on the exam were the same ones I got last week. Many were different. While I was somewhat faster on ones I’d seen before, I deliberately slowed myself down. My problem last week was silly mistakes not lack of knowledge. So I had to make a point of being more careful.

In terms of time, I had 16 minutes left with one skipped question. (There was one with a lot of reading near the end and I figured I’d feel less rushed if I did it last. I spent 6 minutes on that questions. I then spent 5 minutes checking a few. I still didn’t get to check the majority of questions I marked for careful review. Submitted with 5 minutes left.

We let Oracle know about the exam length problem so hopefully they do something to improve the situation.

For content, I got a lot of pattern matching and records. I didn’t get virtual threads or sequenced collections this time (I did last week) so definitely luck of the draw.

After the exam

I removed the Lockdown browser software from my machine. It has a lot of power so I like it not being there.

I also went to the CertView page to get my badge. I used Chrome as Safari on Mac didn’t let me expand the menus.

To see my exam details:

• Expand “Exam Results” on left navigation
• Click “Exam History” on left navigation
• Click “Results” on this exam on the right side
• This downloads a PDF showing which objectives you got a question wrong on

For credentials, expand “Credential Management” on left navigation. You can then download a certificate or badge. There are also links to post on Linked In or email a link to verify your credential. I then went on Linked in and added a credential including the credential URL.

As we mentioned earlier last week, Oracle announced their new Java 21 Certification Exam 1Z0-830 this week. Scott passed on Friday and wrote about his experience. Today was my turn.

Before the exam

I registered on Friday night to take the exam on Monday morning. As Scott noted, the registration process has changed a lot and we will be posting blogs about that. I chose the 7am slot so I wouldn’t have to miss much work time. Starting Sunday at 8am, I got a reminder every 3 hours. Yes, that’s 8 reminder emails. Seems excessive, but I was definitely reminded

I cleaned up to unplug my second monitor and have my workspace free of books and papers. (Which oddly the proctors didn’t check for). I took out my two forms of id. I even left myself a post it reminding to use Chrome and not Safari. And I made sure to get up with enough time to have breakfast and get dressed by 6:30am. Checkin starts half an hour before the exam slot.

Checking in

I did the Lockdown Browser test the day before. I had to do it again right before the exam (just the test, not the practicing with the UI). Sign in was quick. There’s an embedded Zoom meeting with everyone in your slot. You raise your hand to be taken to a breakout where the proctor checks your id. I didn’t hold mine close enough to the camera so got a chat message to do so. Then I got the code for the exam. Which started the two hour timer right away.

I asked my proctor about showing my scratch paper was blank and the proctor didn’t want to see it (Scott’s proctor did). Also odd was that you could see the names and video of everyone in your group while in the main room. Once you moved to your exam tab, they were offscreen. Still seems like an odd security choice to have people on video without virtual background to strangers.

The exam

Like Scott I had some very long questions. A number had 15+ lines of code with 4-6 of those as options. And many were very similar which meant I had to waste time spotting the differences to figure out what I was being asked. Which is hard when they are next to each other and even harder when scrolling. And then actually answer the questions. There were still some multiple choice with 4-6 answers and some word problems with multiple choice answers.

Like Scott, I saw a lot of topics mixed together in a single question. I liked the questions as they got you to think about code. I didn’t like how much I had to scroll/remember at one time from the question. And that was with scrap paper. I used it for process of elimination and to keep track of variable state.

As for content:

• Pattern matching switch was definitely on the exam (with and without records)
• Scott didn’t get a question about Virtual threads or Sequenced Collections and noted it was likely just bad luck of the draw. I got questions about both. And they tested the core concepts of each topic, not just using them in passing. So definitely covered.
• The topics removed from the objectives were not on the exam.
• The questions I got covered the objectives well.

How I did

Normally, I when I take an exam, I finish answering all the questions between the halfway and two thirds point. At that point, I go through all the questions again with an emphasis of what I was unsure of and typically fix 3-7 stupid mistakes from misreading or things I didn’t notice. And then I wind up with a good amount of time left on the timer and end early.

That was not my experience. With 18 minutes left, I had six questions I hadn’t even looked at. I flagged anything long at that point without reading and got to the end with 10 minutes left. I then used the next six minutes to answer the three long ones I flagged from those six. That left me with 4 minutes left. I was afraid that the exam attempt wouldn’t go through if it hit zero so I ended it there. That means I didn’t have time to review my answers and fix the stupid mistakes I always make. That was reflected in my score – 62%. Which is 3 questions below passing. See blog post for when I passed a week later

I’m currently worried about the length of the exam. I’ve never come close to running out of time on an exam. I probably could have gone a tiny bit faster if I wasn’t thinking about the exam relates to our book. But I did that for all the other exams and it didn’t affect my time in any noticeable way. I’m hoping Oracle sees this and rebalances the exam to have less long questions.