On 7/16/2013 2:08 PM, Morris Bernstein wrote:
How much prep time is required for a 40-hour class? 3 hours per hour of class time?
Try 20 hours of prep per hour of class if there's any quality to it. And that's for the first pass. Because things change and you'll have to revise the class plan over and over through the months and years. It's a never ending battle.
I'm the PyCamp guy. My classes are inexpensive because I'm not doing it for the money. I'm doing it to spread Python to newcomers, fund-raise for Python groups and events (I'm on the PSF Outreach and Education Committee and we review funding requests), and broaden my ties to the Python community at large. I take vacation from work and donate my time to do it. The PyCamp price point is specifically to lure more people into Python. I could charge a lot more. But fewer people would participate. I want maximum participation. I want impact. I thank the people on this list who recommended my upcoming boot camp in Seattle.
But after much experience, my observation is if you are delivering Python trainings in order to make income, then you're doing it wrong. It's a quick route to poverty for a whole bunch of work. This is why commercial training mills charge wheelbarrows full of cash for trainings of dubious value.
Learn Numpy/SciPy/Matplotlib applied to your domain in three days? I don't think so. Maybe get an overview in three days. Heck, it can take someone with gobs of experience three days just to optimize your Fortran compiler or graphics rendering engine for good performance with Python's scientific stack.
So my other observation is going towards a deeper issue. If you are sending "experienced developers" to advanced stack trainings, you are doing it wrong. Experienced developers learn by exploring and experimenting for themselves. I think it's why most of us do Python, because Python makes it so much easier to explore and experiment. But getting up to speed in a productive way with the Python scientific stack takes weeks to months of study and hands-on experience, something a lot of workplaces don't budget or plan for.
If you want to run with the big dogs, you can't puppy around. My best recommendation for getting a shop of experienced developers up to speed on the Python scientific stack in the most accelerated way possible is to hire a developer or two with that experience and stick them in your bull pen with your existing developers: mentoring and especially pairing are way underrated. That's a lot more expensive than $15K. But I think throwing $15K at advanced stack trainings are a waste of money anyway. Making proper investments is what separates winners from losers.
I'm not saying this to get anyone to come to PyCamp. I would only recommend PyCamp to "experienced developers" if they are having difficulty with doing things the Python way or want a quick immersion in Python culture. That is, you can always tell when a Python program has been written by someone coming from a Java or Perl background and those approaches are definite handicaps in the Python world.
-- Sincerely, Chris Calloway http://nccoos.org/Members/cbc office: 3313 Venable Hall phone: (919) 599-3530 mail: Campus Box #3300, UNC-CH, Chapel Hill, NC 27599
