April 2004 - Posts
Tomorrow is my last day as a consultant in one of the most innovative and smart banks here in Italy.
Hey guys, it was a pleasure working with you. You have a very young and smart environment, full of very nice people.
I've learned a lot from you.
Hope to work with you again in the future.
But perhaps the next time, PLEASE, give me an Internet connection, I'm tired of using the sloooooooow GPRS connection or the expensiiiiiiiive UMTS connection...
I've a big problem...
The next week I've to teach a seminar about VB 6 to .NET migration, and I'm not sure that I want to tell them that the next version of VB (no more .NET at least in the name) will allow you to write "VB6 like" Windows Forms code.
I know that the biggest problem of migrating to .NET is the Object Oriented nature of all the framework, including Windows Forms.
But I think that it's better to teach them how to do it in the OO way (perhaps with a tooltip when they use the old syntax, with links to examples and samples), and not give them back the Default Instance. Very Ugly!!!
What I have to do? Can I hide this information?
I received a comment from Kal about my previous post about teaching:
But don't you think that this saying is untrue? And deregatory to the teaching profession?
"Those that can do" - only because they lack the patience to teach.
"Those that can't teach" - clearly untrue. Motivational speakers - teach by example. Maybe this should really say "Those that can't teach from a syllabus" - I guess there's difference between teaching from a syllabus and teaching from experience.
Overall I don't like the saying - its deregatory, but then Who the hell am I? Riiiiight.
I completely agree with you. I think that this saying is very bad for most of the teachers, for who likes his/her profession and for who really knows a lot about what he/she is teaching.
I haven't said that I agree with that sentence, I said that I was thinking about that, and now I want to add something that is valid especially in the IT field.
I'm a trainer, and I'm proud to be. I'm an MCT and I'm proud to be. But I'm not a full time trainer.
I teach for the 10% of my time and I do programming/consulting for the other 90%. I think that a full time trainer, 100% allocated to teach classes, at a certain point can loose contact with the REAL world. In this field keeping in contact with the REAL world and having a REAL world experience is the only way to teach things that matter. Everybody is able to read a book, or a MOC (Microsoft Official Course), or something else.
The best part of my lessons are REAL world experiences. I refuse to teach courses if I haven't enough experience on the subject. Period.
I really like following lessons/conferences from REAL world programmers, not from people who have only studied a lesson. I want to learn from people WHO DO THINGS!
It's a MUST for me and it is what I want to offer to my students.
That's for example the difference from going to TechEd (or PDC, or some other high level conference) and reading the slides. You miss the EXPERIENCE of the speaker, you miss REAL WORLD situations.
Thank you very much Kal for the opportunity to clarify my thoughts! And I think you have to start your blog!
And sorry to anybody else if you're tired of my rants about teaching and learning... This is the last... At least for today :-)
Only to complete yesterday's night post, regarding my sentence:
As a trainer I think that I've to learn a lot (and I really learn a lot from my students), but as a consultant/developer I think that perhaps I've already learned too much!!!
I've probably used the wrong word, instead of saying that I've learned too much, perhaps I could have said that I've seen too much!
I've seen too many things that are difficult to design, make and maintain only because somebody has chosen the wrong way, too many people that claim to be experts and that always pretend to be on the right side, and I stop here, I think that all of you know what I'm talking about...
Another consideration. I've received a mail after my previous post from Sonya Weiser, with two very interesting quotes:
Completely agree, very nice!
During the next weeks I'll teach a very nice one day seminar in Italian::
Application migration from Visual Basic 6 to .NET!
Here is the agenda of the seminar, and the dates, in italian:
- Introduzione al .NET Framework e alle novità di VB.NET
- Migrazione dei costrutti del linguaggio
- Migrazione delle Form VB alle Windows Forms
- Migrazione dello strato di accesso ai dati
- C# come alternativa a VB.NET, differenze, vantaggi e svantaggi
- In che direzione andremo in futuro (Visual Studio 2005 "Whidbey" e Windows "Longhorn")
- Considerazioni conclusive
Date e costi:
- 06 Maggio 04 - VR - 100€+iva
- 07 Maggio 04 - MI - 100€+iva
- 13 Maggio 04 - BA - 100€+iva
- 14 Maggio 04 - RM - 100€+iva
Nominando questo blog nella form di iscrizione, riceverete uno sconto del 10% (dieci euro) sul prezzo di iscrizione!
Basta menzionare lo sconto e il blog nel form di iscrizione. Affrettatevi, i posti sono limitati!!!
I don't know if it's the right translation (or if my English is good enough...), but here in Italy we use to say that about teachers and workers.
Considering that I work as a trainer for the 10% of my time and as a consultant/developer for the other 90%, I'm thinking about that...
As a trainer I think that I've to learn a lot (and I really learn a lot from my students), but as a consultant/developer I think that perhaps I've already learned too much!!!
What do you think?
I've just read this post from Michiko, and I thought that some years ago I decorated my Christmas Tree with more than fifty MSDN CDs...
How do you use your old CDs?
Great that they now supply also DVDs, less garbage every month!
I cannot resist... here are my favourite MS programs:
- MS Money - Great!!!
- MSN Messenger 6.2
- MS Office System 2003
- MS Visual Studios
- MS Virtual PC
and all the others... especially the alpha/beta versions, that I like more than RTM ones :D!!!
Stefano asks what are our top 10 non-MS programs. Here are mine:
- Messenger Plus!
- RSS Bandit
- SmartBarXP
- Crazy Browser
- Perfect Disk 6.0
- WinZip
- DivX codecs
- Xteq Systems X-Setup
- Nero Burning Rom
- McAfee Virus Scan
I install them everytime I reinstall my PC... not too often but sometimes it happens :-)
Today I bought a Motorola A835 with a SIM card from 3 Italy
Yes, I know, it's the wrong Motorola, it doesn't have the Windows Mobile logo, it's a Java phone :-(, it's...
But I payed 129€ for it, and it comes with a 30€ prepaid SIM, plus 150€ that I'll receive for free in the next months. I think that it's a good deal!!!
I've not yet tried it, but I'll do it tomorrow.
The only thing is that very big, the triple of my old Nokia 8310, but hey, it has a very big and nice screen, a big keyboard and two cameras, both in the back and on the front.
And it comes with two batteries, an USB sync cable, IRda and Bluetooth support. Let's see tomorrow how it works!
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