Category: Teaching
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My winding career path
I got a question today about why I left the aerospace engineering to become a software developer and trainer, especially when the aerospace field is so popular at the moment. I’ll assume for the sake of argument that the questioner is right about the popularity of aerospace engineering. I don’t know any more, for obvious…
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Focusing on what’s important
At the No Fluff, Just Stuff conference I attended last week, I managed to talk to a couple of the presenters and quietly ask about the rates they charge. That’s always a dicey subject, of course, but it’s very hard to get good information about that. Software trainers don’t have a union, or anything like…
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Always trying to make contact
I guess this is more of a Xander story than a holiday story, but it has the benefit of being true and even cheerful. My son Xander (short for Alexander — calling him Xander makes him unique in a crowd full of Alexanders and Alexandras) enjoys playing baseball, but he never had a chance to…
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Some things I’m happy about
I realized I’ve been doing some complaining lately, probably because I’ve been fighting a cold recently and that makes everything harder. (Aside: In almost seven years of full-time training, I’ve never missed a day due to illness. This week I came awfully close to breaking that streak, but pulled it out somehow. Now if my…
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Some things I have to remind myself periodically
Here are some instructor tips I’ve learned but have to remind myself over and over again, because I forget. 1. If a student asks a question that I’ve just finished answering, keep in mind that if the student is thinking, they’re not listening to me. That’s a good thing. 2. Just because a student is…
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Design Patterns
The class I’m teaching this week and next is a massive, customized combination of Design Patterns, JSTL, JSF, Spring, and Hibernate. It’s going to be an adventure. Today, though, we were digging into patterns. Design patterns has usually been my favorite course to teach. If teaching is all about giving people the ability to do…
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Ajax in Amsterdam
You know what I hate? When I feel my phone vibrating on my hip and I’m not wearing my phone. This is my first time in Amsterdam. The training site is an IBM center, but I think this is just a room rental. I’m a sub to a sub to a sub again, so it’s…
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World Traveler
One of the cool things about this job is that every once in a while I get an email like this: —————————————— From: one of my training company clients To: Me Subject: Want to go to Europe next week for us? Would you like to go to Amsterdam next week to teach an Ajax class…
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Philadelphia and Fun with RAD6
Back to Philly this week, doing servlets and JSPs with RAD6. At least they remembered to install RAD6 this time. Last week they didn't, and it took four hours to download and install the product. I might even try running the updater and see what happens. In the meantime, it's Hibernate some more. I'm going…
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EJB’s in RAD6 in Columbus, OH
This week I'm in Columbus, Ohio, teaching a five-day EJB class in RAD6. As I learned last week, IBM would prefer I call the product IRAD, meaning IBM Rational Application Developer. That's going to be a tough transition, assuming I try to do it at all. The students this time are from the State of…