In large cities, such as St. Petersburg, there are a lot of programming courses. However, any course has pitfalls. What should you pay attention to when choosing programming courses in St. Petersburg?
Features of teaching in full-time courses?
So, you live in St. Petersburg and found some courses by entering something like “learning to program in St. Petersburg” into a search engine.
What is the teacher here?
First of all, pay attention to who leads the courses, what kind of person they are and ... how many of them. If there is only one teacher, you should ask what audience he works for. Suppose a teacher works with 10-15 people in one group, and he has several such groups. A reasonable question arises: how carefully can he check each student's homework? Agree, the main value of full-time education is not so much in lectures, but in the presence of feedback, the opportunity to get expert advice and verified homework with comments - what is good and what is worth working on. Therefore, in good courses, you can find a situation where the main lecturer is assisted by an assistant or several assistants. Actually, like in high school. The next question to ask is
Often Java courses in St. Petersburg offer training from theoretical teachers. The trouble is that the smartest and most gray-haired doctor of technical sciences is not necessarily a good developer. However, if you are lucky, you will meet a working programmer. Well, if you are very lucky, then the current programmer will have the skills of a teacher. If you are one of the lucky ones, hold on to these java courses, St. Petersburg may be a big city, but such a combination is a rare phenomenon even for it. We repeat, usually the teacher is either very far from practice, or he himself is still a very young specialist, or he does not know how to teach (which is most often).
How are the Java courses in St. Petersburg?
On average, programming courses in St. Petersburg from scratch last 2-3 months. Classes are held in the mode of 2-3 academic hours per week, in person. A good teacher devotes the first 30-40 minutes of the lesson to students' questions, after which he starts lecturing on a new topic. Usually 1-2 programming tasks are assigned to the house. Thus, an applicant solves about 36 tasks per month. As a final exam, many courses offer you to complete a small project, which is likely to be accepted indiscriminately, after which you will be allowed to swim freely. Training completed. Almost all programming courses in St. Petersburg work according to this scenario, and the Java tutorial usually remains within the Java Core.
Cost of programming courses?
The salary of an experienced (say 2 years of experience) Java programmer is around $2,000. If he is Senior, the price tag is twice as high. Thus, a good programming teacher cannot cost less than $6,000 per course. It is easy to calculate that, taking into account the rent of classrooms and other organizational issues, the cost of training for one applicant cannot be less than $600. Naturally, in big cities the average is growing, so the price of Java courses in St. Petersburg will be even higher.
It would be unfair not to mention those programmers who have a good salary in their main job, and teaching activities are carried out as a hobby. They are rather an exception to the rule, so if you find a teacher from among them, consider yourself lucky.
What is the schedule of classes in St. Petersburg?
At full-time courses in St. Petersburg, everything is strict with the schedule: for example, Monday and Thursday from 19 to 21 hours, and no options. If you get sick, stand in a traffic jam or do not keep up with the general pace, then, alas, you will have to change the group. Of course, if you are serious about learning, such problems are unlikely to arise. However, this scenario cannot be ignored, especially for those who work full time. Such courses require sufficient concentration to digest and comprehend complex information. Disadvantages of face-to-face education:
the combination of a good teacher + programmer is a rarity;
the teacher cannot pay enough attention to each student;
too little practice for beginners;
high cost if the teacher is an active programmer, low quality if it is not;
binding to the time and place of the lecture.
The emphasis on the cons is not campaigning against full-time education. On the contrary, if time and money allows you, study in courses. Choose any courses from the search engine rating and sign up for training. But do not forget that a high rating is not always true. Look not for a well-known school, but for a caring teacher. Visit the specialized forums, ask around with the experienced.
Online Java Courses
Online classes are essentially the same as regular group classes, only the training takes place at the computer at your home or wherever it is convenient for you, via videoconference. Videoconferencing provides the opportunity to ask questions to the teacher. Online classes consist of:
video recordings of lectures / webinars;
communication in a general chat;
communication with the teacher.
This is the most common learning model. Recordings of lectures are much more convenient to view and you can not be afraid to miss a lecture. True, the teacher may not be enough for everyone. More expensive education already involves recording lectures, homework and personal communication between the mentor and the student. This training option is more effective, but only if you get a good mentor. In addition to the above models, there are a lot of courses with all kinds of tests, videos, tasks, etc. The effectiveness of such courses is very small, because a lot of students sign up for them and the teacher, most likely, will simply not pay attention to you. Often such courses in St. Petersburg have already lost their relevance, as they were recorded several years ago.
CodeGym - special courses from scratch
CodeGym is a well designed online Java language learning system. You will not find boring webinars here - we preferred short lectures on Java Core, written in the form of dialogues (this is not boring!) And a lot - 1200 - tasks. Most importantly, CodeGym has built-in code auto-checking and a recommendation system. That is, you will always know whether you solved the problem correctly. To do this, you click on the "Check" button and you instantly get an answer. If there are errors in the solution, the recommendation system will tell you which ones and what to do with them. If the error is non-standard, or you are completely confused about the solution / theory, the CodeGym Help page is at your service. Here you can ask a question about any problem or theory, and one of the more experienced students, developers or resource administration will definitely answer you. You can say All this makes CodeGym not just an online course, but a virtual tutor course and community for learning Java. You can take the course from two months to a year, depending on your pace and previous programming experience. However, among the graduates of the course there are those who knew nothing at all and learned programming from scratch in three months, after which they quickly found a job.
So, CodeGym offers:
more than 500 lectures;
over 1200 Java programming tasks (compared to 36 tasks in 3 months in face-to-face courses!);
the possibility of passing an online internship and creating a real project for a portfolio;
instant check of tasks, result in 1 click;
checking style and code;
hint system;
a community of like-minded people, students and teachers.
CodeGym online courses are suitable both as a standalone course and as an advanced collection of problems to help full-time courses or study at a specialized university.
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