Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2010-04-23 10:49:06 - Graham Ellis
We run public Perl courses every 2 or 3 months at our Melksham, Wiltshire training centre, and private courses on site at customer offices at about the same frequency. Private Perl courses are tailored to customer's needs and may be almost anywhere - typically they're in the UK or Ireland, but occasionally much further afield. (The illustration is a from a private Perl course which I recently ran in Germany).
A string of good questions in the last few days ... and I've compiled a fresh FAQ to answer some of them:
Q - You do separate courses for newcomers to programming, and for delegates who are converting from another language for most of your subjects - but not for Perl. Why is that?
In the case of Perl, the course for newcomers to the language and for people who have programmed before (in languages like C and C++ perhaps) are combined. That's because - with Perl - we found that even delegates with prior experience of coding wanted to come on the extra lead in day rather than a four day course that assumed prior coding knowledge. We asked ourselves "why" and concluded it's because there are aspects of the Perl philosophy that are very different indeed, and people prefer to spend a day longer and be really sure that can learn everything properly from basics. And it works well.
Note - we also offer advanced Perl courses - see [here] for details of all public Perl courses.
Q - I see three sets of dates on your web site (for the rest of the year). Will there be any additional dates added?
There are very unlikely to be any additional dates; what's on the web site is pretty definite. If you had a group of 3 or more of you all wanting the same course at the same time, they we could lay an extra course on, and indeed a lot of our training IS private courses. But on the other side of the coin, you can be reassured that once you book we won't cancel / change the dates on you
Q - Do you use a standard textbook during the course - if so, which?
We write our own training notes - about 250 A4 side in Perl, which then forms a training manual. We have around 700 opens source books here at our training centre, for additional reference during the course. A surprising number of them (over 100) are about Perl or have major Perl sections - which means that while you're with us you can browse through the books and decide which are best suited to you - then order them, assured, online if you wish.
Q - What version of Perl do you cover?
The course is covering Perl 5. We'll have 5.8 and 5.10 on the systems we use for the course, and ensure that you're aware of the differences, and we've got an important section "looking forward to Perl 6". Perl is an interpretive language, which means that most users will write code in a version that they can be assured will be available on target distribution machines, so the move to Perl 6 (as it eventually hits a production release) will be very drawn out.
Q - Can we come on the course, but not pay until 90 days later
For well established organization with a good credit rating, we can offer extended terms - but we make an extra charge if you require credit beyond 28 days, and it must be requested at time of booking. See [here]
Q - Perl's been around for a long time - is it still a good language?
We run public Perl courses every 2 or 3 months at our Melksham, Wiltshire training centre, and private courses on site at customer offices at about the same frequency. Private Perl courses are tailored to customer's needs and may be almost anywhere - typically they're in the UK or Ireland, but occasionally much further afield. (The illustration is a from a private Perl course which I recently ran in Germany).