Tcl training - often for a larger group
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2007-02-24 08:36:25 - Graham Ellis
There's a different 'metric' for courses in the different languages we teach - PHP programmers come in ones and twos much of the time, but almost all of the Tcl training we do is for larger groups of delegates, in private courses at their place of work. Why is this? Tcl is used as an embedded element within larger systems - a bedrock on which a potentially quite complex operation in a high tech industry is run. So there aren't a lot of applications around, but those which ARE around are key to a team of people, all of whom need to be able to read / understand the scripts at least at a basic level.
And so it is that I find myself on site - in Edinburgh, Dublin, Coventry, Crawley, Bristol or (this week) High Wycombe, teaching a group of delegates far larger than I would dream of handling on a public course. A dozen people these few days leaving me, I admit, a little tired by Friday evening - but exhilarated too with a new group of friends and new knowledge of how another client uses Tcl, Expect and (in this case) Incr-Tcl.
As a footnote - why do we run larger private courses than public courses? Because on a public course - with delegates coming from different companies, with different applications of the technology and different parts of the subject they wish me to concentrate on, I need to have good time during the course to look after each and every one of a number of subtle varying requirements. And I've also got to be the fluid that oils the interaction - at least early on the course - between delegates who have never set eyes on each other before. Contract that to a private course, which starts of with me being the outsider from the group, and where everyone is looking to learn the subject with a similar slant so that they can work on the same or related projects under the same umbrella.