Training by Coding

I have been presenting various Java, Eclipse and OO courses for a number of years now, and always tended to allow at least half of the courses’ time to be used doing practical exercises.

This week is the first time I’m presenting a whole new Java learning experience: the students has to build a deliverable, running client-server application that persists to a database in one week’s time, using only Java SE. In this case the students only learned the Java basics the previous week.

And they are enjoying it immensely. And I am enjoying it. This course really is a lot fun.

It also makes me wonder: can’t I somehow combine this with the more theoretical introductory course? The difficulty would be to somehow cover the necessary theory on OO, Polymorphism and the various Java syntax and constructs, while allowing the students to spend at least 80% of the time coding an actual project, applying TDD, deploying deliverable code and learning some tricks and tips a theoretical course would not cover. I even throw in a bit of DDD.

A week would probably not be enough, and then it gets more difficult selling the course to companies, as most companies can’t even spare one week in fear of their project plans being disturbed.

I’m confident that this more practical and more interactive (as in extremely interactive) approach to introductory technical courses are the way forward, and this week proofs it for me.

Keep an eye on this blog as I’ll be introducing changes into my existing Java, Eclipse RCP and OO courses.

And, as always, I am very keen on hearing your thoughts around this.