I got the idea from this blog post: How to Assess, Decide, Do with Pen, Paper and Magnets . I read the article about a year after it was written, when I first heard about the author, Dragos Roua, who was providing a productivity workshop at Excelez, a personal development conference in Bucharest. I couldn't make it to the event, but started to read Brilliantly Better, Dragos' blog on "living a better life, screwing up and everything in between", on a regular basis. Up to date, this is my favourite source of inspiration and motivation.
I am still interested in Oracle Java Certification. If I was younger, I would have definitely enjoyed the challenge, which is like a marathon, stretching your physical resources more than your intelligence. I have experienced this type of exam, made up from hundreds of similar questions that you have to answer quickly and continuously for about three hours, when I was applying for admission in an American university. About 20 years ago, that is, but that memory is still unpleasant. Maybe because it was a meaningless and useless effort.
Having said that, I am not sure that I will actually sit in the certification exams myself, but I enjoy coding in Java and I know something about practicing for exams. So I challenge those of you who are interested to provide a better implementation of a whiteboard with magnets. As you could hear in the presentation videos from above in this post, the best way to learn a programming language is to write code.
Video created using Camtasia Studio 7.1, of which I heard here.