Saturday, March 27, 2010

Book - feedback so far

The book has just gone back to the printers for a second run. Apparently the first print run (a few thousand I think?) was chewed up by Amazon and direct pre-orders. It's fantastic for that many people to have the book and I really hope it helps you in preparing for the exam.

So, the feedback so far: the reviews on Amazon (both .com and .co.uk) are for the old book, not the new one. Amazon just copied the reviews across (the last one was written two years before the new book published).

So all I've got to go on are comments that I've received directly. Broadly speaking, reviewers fall into two camps:

1. Those who like the ~200 page guide / map to a much larger body of research material (happy);

2. Those who want / expect to find all of the revision material in one book (not so happy).

Our goal was always to write a book that did not replicate the reams of material that exist for the JEE platform. We simply saw no point in doing that. Instead, we wanted to write a book that the candidate could use to:

1. Construct a revision schedule for Part One;

2. Understand how to approach Part Two - constructing your own solution for a given business problem using the JEE platform;

3. Prepare the candidate for Part Three - defending your Part Two submission and explaining how you solution satisfies various NFRs (non-functional requirements).

Broadly speaking, I think we've hit the goals we set. There is an errata list that will be sent to the publisher for the second print and will be published here as well for the purchasers of the first run.