SL-275/SL-425 Courseware and Lab Files#

Hi! Mike speaking.

I get quite a lot of hits on this site from people who appear to be searching for Sun SL275 "Java Programming" and SL-425 "Designing and Architecting J2EE Applications" course lab files.

Up to now they have tended to land at SL-275ClassroomSetup or SL-425ClassroomSetup - pages I keep as a handy checklist for training centres who need to set up classrooms for those courses when I am teaching them. Not much use to the searchers, I suspect. So, instead, I decided to add this page for your amusement and edification...

Let me guess...#

• you're attending the SL-275 "Java Programming" or SL-425 "Design and Architecture" course (and there's a strong possibility that you're in California, which would mean that you're likely attending the course at the Sun campus)
• quite possibly you're bored
• you've been asked by the instructor to complete one of the lab exercises, and you're googling for a solution to the lab exercise that you can just cut & paste into your editor or IDE. (Are they using Netbeans? I sure hope so.)

Sadly I have to let you down. You won't find the lab files, worked solutions or any of the course materials here. Those belong to Sun Oracle, and I'd have to be pretty daft of me to mess about with a business relationship spanning almost a decade and a half by putting their materials online, wouldn't I?

Aside from that, I don't use the lab exercises that Sun have in the course manuals. They're dreary and boring. I use much more fun exercises that I developed long before Sun included decent lab exercises in these courses. Sorry, again; you'll have to attend the course with me teaching it to find out... ;-)

But maybe I can help you in another way#

At least I might keep you slightly more amused.

People attending the SL-275 "Java Programming" course tend to fall into one of three groups:

1. Programmers who already know Java to a reasonable level, but have been sent on the course (often a year or three later than would have actually been useful to them) because Training Budget has finally been approved, or because some manager feels that their ass is exposed if they don't "send their people for training." They're just dotting i's and crossing t's. And the course doesn't really have much to offer you, does it?
2. Programmers who already know Java and are attending the SL-275 course because it is the recommended pathway to writing the certification exam in order to become a Sun Certified Java Programmer. These developers want a course that covers all the peculiar corner-cases and oddities that might come up in the certification exam. Sadly, if this is you, I have some bad news for you, if you hadn't realised it already...
3. Programmers from other worlds who do not have the understanding of object-oriented concepts that the SL-275 courseware presumes. These folks are out of their depth in the course, and feeling it! Quite a few of them get so severely discouraged by this that they drop out of any OO development pretty soon after attending the course and return to developing in Delphi, Visual Basic or some 4GL where they are more comfortable and productive. Quite often they have attended some sort of "Intro to OO" course - usually about 3 or 4 days duration - before attending SL-275, but they don't truly have the experience of practically applying those concepts in software development and design. I can help!

Of course there are occasionally others who don't fall neatly into one of these categories, but this covers about 90% of cases in my ever-so-humble experience. (If you think I'm completely wrong, feel free to drop me a line and let me know!)

Help Is At Hand#

So let's see if I really can help you to pan some gold out of the dross of a course that may not be much use to you...

• If you're in category 1 - "Experienced Java Developer Bored by SL-275" I have some good news for you...
• If you're in category 2 "Studying for the Certification Exam" I don't have good news so much as some advice that I hope you'll find useful and encouraging...
• If you're in category 3 "Lost and Drowning" then I have really, really helpful information for you...

See you on the other side!