Getting your examples, my examples and the data files after your course
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2005-03-13 18:02:12 - Graham EllisI'll encourage you to write practical examples that are relevant to you during training courses with us, and I'll also write demonstrations "on the fly" in front of you. That way, you go away having done something that's relevant, and having seen how programs are designed and written in the language that you're learning from scratch. I know this is unusual for training courses, and it's only practical for us to do it because of the long professional experience and deep subject knowledge of your tutor.
After every programming course, we email each trainee with a copy of all the programs that they wrote during the course, and with a copy of all the examples written by the tutor too. Examples that are found within the training notes are also available via links from our training module index.
To go with your programs, you'll want the relevant input data.
Surprisingly, there are some "issues" with that apparently simple and obvious request.
a) Some of the data files that we use are huge and would clog up anything except the widest broadband link for quite a while
b) There are licensing issues involved with some of the data files - we have copies that we're allowed to use, but not further distribute except under certain conditions that wouldn't be met with an automated forwarding system. See for example the DMOZ license
c) As enclosures, the data files might well be identified as spam or perhaps even as possible viruses by mail filter systems. Even when I have sent a file out by specific request in the past, I've got caught by spam filters.
d) Some of the data files contain our own information which we're quite happy for people to use on courses, but which we don't want to release into the public domain.
So - what solution? How can you use your program after the course? You'll find in our online data directory that you can view the first 20 lines of each data file, and you can copy and paste those lines freely as far as we're concerned. That way, yes, you can test your program, rerun it, and develop it on further to use what is, after all, the final intent of you attending the course - handing your own data.