Course follow-ups

Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2005-04-27 09:02:43 - Graham Ellis
Training is a great line of work for the small business such as Well House Consultants; we can deliver an excellent and personalised service, and our customers don't rely on us being around to provide after sales service ... buying a course is NOT like buying a vacuum cleaner where you want to be reassured that you can go back into the shop later if you need spare parts or if it needs a repair. So organisations big and small place business with us without a lot of checks into our long term viability. We make it even easier for them by NOT requiring any up front payment either (though we may ask for a credit card guarantee or a deposit if we're not dealing with a well established UK organisation). ((Link to full terms and conditions))

But then ... we're delighted to end up providing MUCH MORE than the customer expects in terms of after sales service. From my postbag (or rather my email box) "How do you ever find time to answer all the stupid questions raised by the ever-growing ranks of your past students". Not only do I find time, but I delight in finding the time to answer questions that are very rarely stupid. It's our lifeblood

a) It helps me know what people are asking about after the course so that I can consider including it or clarifying in the future

b) It helps people who have got stopped on what is, perhaps, a tiny issue that they can't see the way round to move forward - chances are that I've "been there before"

c) Via our forum, it helps build up a library of answers that can be of service to others whether our customers or if they find us via Google

d) And it helps in our business development by keeping us in positive touch with a wide range of contacts - networking with folks who may want further services from us, or who may tell others about us.

Here's an example - a follow up to a question about extending lists in Perl - we cover advanced lists and hashes on our Perl for larger projects course.

__START__

# Autovivification in Perl

# When you print out a new element of a list, that new element
# is NOT created. However, when you print out an element of a
# list within a new list, that new list IS created; it has to be
# so that Perl can work out the extra stuff it needs. So

# First example - print $stuff[2] does NOT extend @stuff

@stuff = ([10,20],[30,40]);
@more = (50,60);
print $stuff[2],"\n";
push @stuff,\@more;
print "@stuff\n";

# Second example - print $stuff[2][2] DOES extend @stuff

@stuff = ([10,20],[30,40]);
@more = (50,60);
print $stuff[2][2],"\n";
push @stuff,\@more;
print "@stuff\n";

# Graham

__END__

earth-wind-and-fire:~ grahamellis$ perl prd

ARRAY(0x801180) ARRAY(0x8012dc) ARRAY(0x809f24)

ARRAY(0x80cb08) ARRAY(0x80cb44) ARRAY(0x80cb68) ARRAY(0x809f24)
earth-wind-and-fire:~ grahamellis$

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Course follow-ups