.NET training suggestion for an average developer

Question

Some devs in our office need training. They're working on .NET projects and just aren't picking it up very well. (Their backgrounds are in VB6. Yes. In 2008. Go figure.) I've been to a couple training courses in the past, and they've fortunately been very good. It seems like if you have a good instructor (early DevelopMentor .NET course and Ted Pattison's SharePoint course were great) and you're actively enthusiastic about the subject matter, you can get a LOT out of a good week-long course. My question is whether it's worthwhile for someone who simply might not really care all that much -- an "average" dev. Are they likely to learn enough (or even to magically become inspired) to make the investment worth it for the company?

If so, which general .NET courses with a C# focus would you recommend? I always wanted to try JP Boodhoo's course for no other reason than that he is so darn efficient in Visual Studio/Resharper... and his TDD approach, of course.

Answer 1

I'd say that things like DevelopMentor are fine. Re your distinction between the "enthusiastic" versus "average" developer... in many ways the "enthusiastic" developer can accomplish nearly as much from blogs/trying-it/books/RTFM. So in many ways courses are more useful for the (in your words) "average" developer who needs to be taken away from things to focus on it.

Answer 2

I would suggest a mix of a good course to get the devs up to speed and ongoing coaching for some time. (No I'm not a trainer :-)) Try to get a budget that covers a 5 days course and a consultant that can come in for a few hours a week for a couple of months to do some code reviews and answer questions. Sure questions can be addressed by going online, but during the transition phase there are issues that need to be addressed that go a little deeper than how do I color a TextBox font etc.

Answer 3

Microsoft offer some free basic .NET courses and more in depth paid courses at their e-Learning site. RampUp was also mentioned in this answer.

Answer 4

Gee tough question. I would consider that even an "average" developer will be an order of magnitude more betterer with decent training. Given the economic conditions right now, they are likely to be around a while too. That makes the training probably a good investment from a pure dollar value.

As to whether it helps. From my experience with good training courses, the better trainers had a deep knowledge of the underlying nuts and bolts of the subject matter, so instead of running through the .NET framework with a "here is the ... object", they would go into the details of how garbage collection is implemented and how pointers and the base object is handled in C# etc.

I would hope that even "average" developers would be inspired a little bit if they are respected with the expectation that they can get to grips with this level of detail.

If not...

I would also expect that an in depth comparison of VB vs C# at a low level would be the best way for them to get into C#. At the end of the day, the higher level .NET framework is just a big 'ole library that any idiot can get to grips with given a web browser to MSDN.

Answer 5

Don't forget that different people gain knowledge better in different ways. The whole verbal vs written vs kinetic model of learning. I.E. some people are wired to learn better from someone talking, others can just read a book and get better value whereas others really need to do it themselves. Most courses try and get a mix of all three which is arguably better than just one way of learning, but each person is going to get more or less benefit from different methods.

Most people know how they prefer to learn.

Answer 6

Podcasts

I kinda like Hanselminutes and DotNetRocks to get interested in new technology. You can easily listen to those while on commute or while traveling, and get something out of it. It's not as tiresome as reading blogs/books/manuals and you might as well learn something from it.

I think its more important to get people interested, once they are they'll train themselves. If they don't, courses may/will be a waste of time/money anyway.

Of course there are other great podcasts too, like the StackOverFlow podcast etc..