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.