Good day.



Since spring 2014, I have been combining development in the field of BI and teaching the basics of programming in evening professional (re) training courses. For four years I have developed a certain classification of students. Further, I will tell in general what people are meeting, what problems they have, how they can be solved. Well, as a bonus: how to identify potential talent in the evening classes as an interview.



I admit that such a classification is relevant only in my context, so I will talk a little about the organization. Courses are held internally. Classes start at around 6:00 pm local time. Most often once a week. The time allotted for training varies from 7 to 30 classes and depends on the ability to pay and the desire of the student. The cost of one class for a student costs about 900 rubles. We do not even have a formal screening of students. Who wants to learn, so and work.

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If it is interesting to you, welcome under kat.

Hard workers

Hard workers are men and women who are currently working on some other full-time job. For example, a lawyer, accountant, system administrator or telephone operator. Surgeons and taxi drivers have not yet met. A typical hard worker’s motivation is: “My current job doesn’t suit me and I want to change my profile,” “I want to move, and only programmers and doctors are allowed into <country>” or “The authorities have set the task of finding out on their own.” At the main job, they occasionally have rallies or corporate schiz. This is reflected in the fact that they can often transfer classes or come to class in the untrained state. Some work shift and they may disappear for a month and then return.

How to allocate time to study in your daily routine?

Appeal to laborers - look for time. Only understanding relatives and raised children will help workers with permanent employment. If at home they succeed in creating a working atmosphere for at least a couple of hours a week, the courses will not be in vain. You can try to apply knowledge in the current work. The truth is not need programming courses at all, but something close to life. For example, advanced Excel or SQL. It is curious that the best progress is for those who work as watches or simply sit their trousers in the workplace. Figuratively sells ice cream in the winter.



Appeal to employers - find out how the applicant organized his time for self-study. If a person worked for a full day and then was able to work in the evening, then he * is * very * resistant to processing. If the applicant was engaged in self-training directly at the past workplace, then he chooses the second when choosing from “doing nothing” and “developing”. In case of unforeseen work stoppages, he will continue to invest time in his skills.

How to survive a temporary drop in wages after a change of profession?

Appeal to laborers - think again. Why do you need such a radical change as a change of profession? Maybe you need to change is not a specialty at all, and place of work? Maybe it is better to move to another city? Maybe in the end, you need a little pull up skills on the current job? If you decided to change everything firmly - prepare a big financial pillow: eat easier, stop going to your favorite bar, change from your personal car to public transport or to a bicycle. Well, if you are not ready even for such small changes, how do you imagine the change of profession?



Appeal to employers - find out how a person will live after leaving their current job. Does he assess his resources for the coming year?

Emeli

Emel differ from hard workers in that they have not worked anywhere else. They received a diploma or even a few, but have not yet settled. The main reason is personal passivity. Emeli even come to the courses themselves, but with their parents or from the employment service. In the classroom, they do not ask any questions. Regularly engaged in "meditation" looking at the screen. Progress on tasks occurs only if I sit side by side and ask leading questions. Abstract material does not reach at all. Homework, as a rule, does not do, it is not possible to find out the reason. It is curious that I have never seen emel girls.

Where to attach your favorite child?

Appeal to parents - develop his personal, non-professional skills. In any job from the employee requires sociability, responsibility, etc. by the list. Set tasks for him at least at home and make sure that he himself fulfills them. Do not alter in any way. Send to the army, if you have not bought a soldier. Get a job as an agent of some MLM company, they conduct suitable free training from their selfish interest.

Graduates

There is another category of unemployed - graduates. They either finish their studies, or not so long ago they have finished studying “for programmers”. Graduates believe that they do not have enough knowledge to get a job. They can remember what branching, loop and array are, but they do not always manage to solve the problem with their help (and I have simple tasks). They once heard about the PLO, but did not understand. When viewing jobs, they see a bunch of incomprehensible words. And in each job the words are different. And then there are jobs of enikeyschik in questionable offices with a random set of terms. Graduates can even go to some free conferences. But there, too, people give out a bunch of incomprehensible words from their narrow working context, which does not add clarity at all.

I received a diploma. What's next?

Appeal to students - learn how to solve practical problems. Find a list of tasks for the project and choose something for your taste. If nothing is found and does not occur to you, write a mod to your favorite game, make a bot for the messenger.



I do not see the need to contact employers. Former graduates of “fundamental education” are already in the spotlight.

Housewives

The fourth category is best called Housewives. As you can guess, these are mostly women. The programming courses for them are something at the level of cutting and sewing courses or modeling from clay, or family psychology. They are not going to get a job in this profession, but they are doing quite hard and do their homework in good faith. It is curious that with the housewives you can easily chat the whole lesson on a topic that is not related to the course itself, and they will leave satisfied. When I had few students, housewives met often. When students became more than my time, they began offering courses in photoshop or web page layout.

Complicated

Representatives of the fifth category, I see periodically with the launch of large groups of students. And I see not for long, because soon after the beginning such students stop attending classes. They come to face-to-face classes first of all because they could not cope with the material on a textbook or video tutorial, or with a clever companion. This greatly affects their self-reliance. Some almost from the doorway declare that the student is dumber than they, I have not yet met. Any minor error in the course of training only reinforces this uncertainty. But the ability to make mistakes and try further in search of a solution is very important for the developer. I try to convey the idea that mistakes happen often and you just need to work with them. That is, read the error message itself and think about the causes.



It is worth noting the importance of acceptance tests and detailed conditions of the problem. It is important for students to see that they * really * succeed, then it will be easier for them to master more complex matters. In some cases it is better to give two tasks than one furiously difficult one.

Yet such students sometimes leave without completing their studies. There are several reasons. It may be a matter of undervalued learning. Perhaps with some of these students, I somehow failed to calculate the load. These are my mistakes that are impossible to correct, but can be considered in the future. Thanks to such students, I myself develop as a teacher and improve my teaching materials. However, it is impossible to teach everyone. Simplifying learning materials below a certain threshold becomes meaningless. If a person on courses realized that programming does not suit him - it is even good. Perhaps he will quickly find himself in another area.



Appeal to students - do not give up at the first difficulties. Teachers are people too. Ask questions, ask to rephrase the material, if you do not understand something. Yes, it can be difficult. Remember that the moments of "I do not understand" will always be. You just need to learn to deal with them.

A little bit about everyone

Some features of learning are weakly associated with motivation and basic employment.

In which direction is it really evolving?

Appeal to students - figure out who does what. There are many real directions in IT. "Programmer" is a philistine concept. There is even an anecdote like this: “A programmer is a person who solves a problem that no one knows in a way that no one understands.” If you figure out who you can actually work on, then in the ocean of information from the Internet you can see the major currents and sail along them.

How can the courses get the amount of knowledge that is enough for a job?

No



Appeal to students - engage in self-education. You do not have enough money for such courses, where you really prepare for employment. Ask the teachers for advice and an approximate direction. It is better to come to the evening classes for the sake of consultations, and not for the sake of solving some particular problem.



Appeal to employers - find out what a person learned on their own. If a person has studied only the material of the courses themselves, but was not interested in the world beyond them, then he will go with the flow at work.

Are you sure you can use a computer?

Appeal to students - study (or look for courses) on basic computer administration. In high schools and SPO it is most likely incorporated in the program. Self-taught need to rely only on themselves.



Command line skills will definitely come in handy as one of the basic administration skills. Maybe even at your current job. It is possible that the command line will feed you in the future. Including command line skills in every course is an unaffordable luxury. Weeding out those who do not own it at admission is to be left without students. As a result, the main methods of working with the console remain for self-study. Compilation without IDE `javac ExampleProgram.java` suffers, working with git commit` git commit -m “My first commit” `, and usually it doesn't even get to` node myfirst.js`.



Few know how to open “Explorer” in Windows. Few people have experience with network folders. This, of course, little things. But there are a lot of them and this may make the students DIFFICULT even in the first programming lesson.



Another useful skill is quick typing and hotkeys. The seal is not necessarily blind and ten-finger, but for such there is a good simulator. You will most likely have to write and rewrite a lot. If you select and copy a repetitive fragment with slight differences, you will spend an awful lot of time. If you write short variable names for the sake of time, you may have trouble understanding your own code. And this leads to a lot of mistakes that would be nice to avoid.

Are you sure you can keep records?

I often meet students who do not know how to record information. Some unicums try to rewrite everything from the board, including code snippets. It takes a lot of time. It does not work out well. In the resulting records, only full-text search by eyes works. This can be fought by interrupting the useless copying of letters in time and at the right moments setting the task of recording information in a notebook.

How to predict the result of the courses?

When working with adults, the approach is somehow individualized. But this raises the question, but how to predict the result?



At one time I tried to use the Raven test to assess the potential of students, but abandoned the case. Problems arise either psychologically “my hands are not out of my shoulders, I never succeed”, “she does the tenth forehead, and I am only on the sixth”, or in the organizational “There was no time for homework. Hearing at work, and at home his wife, children, dog ”. However, I still communicate with students before signing the contract in order to assess the level of knowledge, find out the wishes, and give professional guidance. If there are no certain preferences, I try to convince java or c # instead of c / c ++ or php. At the training stage, they have significantly fewer pitfalls and unobvious behavior. Some who wish to have to discourage courses. For example, when a person wants to “make his online store”. For 40 hours on courses from scratch on one php, he does not learn to make a store, but he spends mine and his time.



I am pleased to answer your questions in the comments.