Basic training

[TomBascom]

Is it my imagination or are there an awful lot of people being tossed into the pool without any training or support resources whatsoever?

Is there a need for a strong user group or maybe even a Progress Exchange/PTW sort of event in India?

 

[joey.jeremiah]

i know exactly what thats like, i see it every day.

a good training course and mentoring is invaluable. the right teacher could teach a chimp 4gl and make a great developer out of him.


sadly lots of (but not all) shops don't know any better and even if they did they wouldn't know where to start.

i see lots of companies hiring young people with zero experience so they could make them work ridiculous hours for ridiculous pay and putting them strait to work.


i've met tons of 4gl developers that have been programming for over a decade and have no idea what a transaction is or think locking is some kind of database limitation that has no other reason for being there.

the ones that do come on top take the initiative and start teaching themselves but i rarely see shops with training programs.


what happens is that these developers are frustrated out of their mind and hate every thing about their job, and after a year or two they kill the customer site and leave a lasting impression.

and that could very well happen here.

we could lose alot of customers this way.

btw i also do outsourcing these days for very competitive rates and i believe religiously in training. ones that never end give us a try.

 

[wsong]

Is it my imagination or are there an awful lot of people being tossed into the pool without any training or support resources whatsoever?

Is there a need for a strong user group or maybe even a Progress Exchange/PTW sort of event in India?

I remmembered in 2000, when I first joined a IT service company with a entry level of Progress just capable of writing reports, my boss give a book and told me to give a dozen guys a programming training on Progress 3 days later. I told him I can't, and his answer is we don't have other people, good luck. I can't remember how I did survived, but I have to say a lot of Progress programmers are trained by guys like that. Thanks god, Progress is very programmer friendly.

 

[TomBascom]

Ok, that's true enough. And Progress is very easy to just run with and learn. It just seems like there is a large crop of people popping up who, while thirsty to learn, haven't even been given a cursory "training" class or even been pointed to the documentation.

 

[longhair]

afternoon all,
i'm not sure that the way to look at it is that ' people being tossed into the pool without any training or support resources whatsoever?'
i was tossed into progress about 8 years ago, but had experience in other languages.
after 8 years i'm not guru, but can hold my own at times.
what i've seen in the past 3 - 5 years is that:
1) many 'schools' turn out people who only know how to search for an answer (on the web in this case) - not develop it.
2) many companies are not willing to pay for someone with experience in their specific area, be that programming - accounting - customer service - etc.
penny wise pund foolish imho.
regards,
longhair

 

[tamhas]

I think you make a good point. While it is certain foolish scrimping not to pay for training, I have also had very good experience with on the job training of developers with experience in other languages, particularly if their background was strong in the principles of databases and particularly if they had other 4GL experience. But, of course, this assumes that one is hiring people who are bright and self-motivated.

And, of course, there is the question of the nature of the work. It is one thing to expect someone to pick up 4GL for reporting by working from a rich set of good example code ... should such a set exist in any product or shop ... and it is another thing to expect them to just pick up working with COM objects or web services or something which is both more complex and more esoteric.

I do think that a good mentor is worth a lot more than a class ... but good mentors are rare and it is even more rare for a shop that has no good mentor in house to make arrangements for a consulting mentor, although I can't think of anything which is more likely to improve the quality of development.

One of the problems with a lot of classes ... in addition to the overall problem that not a lot of instructional material is very good, regardless of subject ... is that learning about things which one is not currently using tends to be in one ear and out the other ... the best one can hope for is that the student remembers that they have seen something so that when the need comes up they can go look up their notes, but even that seems to be expecting a lot in many cases.

 

[TomBascom]

Another thing that people might want to try is to simply scan through "Pocket Progress" or the "Quick Reference" whenever they are stymied.

It may not solve the problem that you're having at the moment but it will expose you to the language and you might remember something useful later.

And you'll be able to say that you at least tried to find an answer before turning to the forums...