The Incus Data Training Philosophy
Training Programmers is Different
We believe that training programmers and software
developers in new skills - such as Java, C, C++ and
web development - requires a different approach to
training users.
User training involves training new users how to do a specific task.
Training programmers, on the other hand, means training people to
understand the methodologies, tools and thinking processes
involved for a new language or technology, and how to apply these to
real-world problems.
We also understand that training adults is very different to training children.
For example, did you know that a lecturer has to repeat something more for adults
than a teacher would have to for children?.
Our Approach to Teaching
We base our teaching methods on certain principles:
- Professionalism:
- We believe that a professional attitude towards programming is
paramount and we try to convey this to the programmers on our
courses. We emphasise good programming practice as the mark of
a true professional.
- Communication:
-
Terminology and concepts are clearly defined and used
consistently and in context. This helps to avoid ambiguity and to
promote increased communication skills.
- Standardization:
-
We focus on adherence to international standards where they are
relevant (e.g. in web development). We emphasise generally accepted
conventions, coding standards and portability, as these help to
improve coding quality and maintainability.
Dependence on vendor or non-standard extensions is generally discouraged.
- Comprehension:
-
We do not believe in spoon-feeding programmers and abhore
the "Click-here-click-there" method of teaching.
We believe it is essential to enable programmers to understand the
principles and concepts of the course subject so that they have the
tools to tackle their real-world problems.
- Practicality:
-
We strive to provide useful and relevant advice. This includes
advice on features that may produce undesirable side
effects, and techniques to avoid in practice.
- The Bigger Picture:
-
All our lecturers have extensive knowledge not only of their own
subject matter, but also of other related fields. This helps us to
convey a better understanding of the IT world to delegates.
Good Programming Practice
Throughout our courses, we emphasise the importance
of good programming practice. It is unfortunate that
many programmers are not taught these practices, and
only learn them haphazardly or not at all. We believe
that good programming practice - the principles of
simplicity, clarity and generality - result in better
code and a lower cost of maintenance. For this reason
we strongly encourage the following practices on our courses:
- Proper indentation and the use of white space to increase readability.
- Use of a clear and consistent style.
- The liberal use of comments to document the code.
- The choice of meaningful names for variables and procedures.
- The design of code that is simple and re-usable.
- Intelligent choice of features that increase portability.
- Proper respect for users by designing applications that are easy to use.
- Adherence to coding standards within the client organisations, or
if none exist, the importance of setting up such standards.
