My boss got excited about a flyer for one of those IT short course, and the next thing you know, I was signed up for two days of "Mastering Java Web Applications" So I spent the last two days in a dingy hotel conference room up in Denver.
1. Two ancient computers for 3 students. 900MHz P3 with 256MB of RAM running XP. It literally took minutes for the Java IDE we were using to load.
2. Instructor was completely unprepared - we had to download the Java JDK over the hotels dog slow network and install it ourselves - taking up most of the first morning.
3. The instructors idea of "teaching" was reading verbatim from the powerpoint and the ~50 page info packet we got. Any attempts to break him loose from that revealed that he was completely clueless.
4. That 50 pages of material consisted mostly of step-by-step tutorials of the trained monkey variety (push a button, eat a banana) which were completely bug-ridden. And this is for a class which this instructor alone claims to have taught 6 times before.
5. At the beginning of the class the instructor asked what we wanted to accomplish. I spoke up and said I wanted to learn how to set up a web service. With 2 hours left yesterday, I brought it up again - his reply was to find a section on web services in one of his big Java books, put it in front of me and say "here, look at this." I asked him point blank if he had ever set up a Java web service. No
6. The class was 0900 to 1600 with a 1.25 hour lunch and two 15 minute breaks per day. So about 11.5 total hours of "instruction" for about $1200.
Now, I didn't expect to "master" java web applications in two days. But I did expect to come away with a good feel for what they were, where to start, etc. I've taken other short courses on engineering subjects and have been generally happy with what we covered. But they were much more intense, focused, fast paced, and usually put in at least a 10 hour day. And the instructor was generally a recognized expert in the field. This guy did have all the certs though - he rattled off a whole alphabet soup list of them at the beginning of the class :roll:
On top of all that, the guy was a complete MS shill - but he always prefaced those statements with "I'm not a microsoftie but ..."
All in all, a very disapointing experience. I told my boss that the next time he can just give me a $1200 bonus and two days off and I'll teach myself whatever it is.
1. Two ancient computers for 3 students. 900MHz P3 with 256MB of RAM running XP. It literally took minutes for the Java IDE we were using to load.
2. Instructor was completely unprepared - we had to download the Java JDK over the hotels dog slow network and install it ourselves - taking up most of the first morning.
3. The instructors idea of "teaching" was reading verbatim from the powerpoint and the ~50 page info packet we got. Any attempts to break him loose from that revealed that he was completely clueless.
4. That 50 pages of material consisted mostly of step-by-step tutorials of the trained monkey variety (push a button, eat a banana) which were completely bug-ridden. And this is for a class which this instructor alone claims to have taught 6 times before.
5. At the beginning of the class the instructor asked what we wanted to accomplish. I spoke up and said I wanted to learn how to set up a web service. With 2 hours left yesterday, I brought it up again - his reply was to find a section on web services in one of his big Java books, put it in front of me and say "here, look at this." I asked him point blank if he had ever set up a Java web service. No
6. The class was 0900 to 1600 with a 1.25 hour lunch and two 15 minute breaks per day. So about 11.5 total hours of "instruction" for about $1200.
Now, I didn't expect to "master" java web applications in two days. But I did expect to come away with a good feel for what they were, where to start, etc. I've taken other short courses on engineering subjects and have been generally happy with what we covered. But they were much more intense, focused, fast paced, and usually put in at least a 10 hour day. And the instructor was generally a recognized expert in the field. This guy did have all the certs though - he rattled off a whole alphabet soup list of them at the beginning of the class :roll:
On top of all that, the guy was a complete MS shill - but he always prefaced those statements with "I'm not a microsoftie but ..."
All in all, a very disapointing experience. I told my boss that the next time he can just give me a $1200 bonus and two days off and I'll teach myself whatever it is.
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