Adaptive Software Solutions

Some time back Jeff Atwood wrote about Sharpening the saw on his blog . He defines sharpening the saw as (which is rightfully attributed to Steven Covey): Sharpening the saw is shorthand for anything you do that isn't programming , necessarily, but (theoretically) makes you a better programmer. There are several things developers can do to sharpen their saw. One of them is participating in programming competitions. There are several websites which host online programming competitions, and I really like this concept. Participants can work on these competitions at a time of their convenience, and those who do not have "real world" competitions hosted in their cities and towns, can also participate. Code Chef publishes online competitions which can be solved in any one of 35 programming languages. I like the fact that they give developers freedom to code in their favorite language. Many other online competitions do not give this freedom, and impose a particular programming...

Sometime back I wrote a blog on the motivation for conducting online, peer taught courses, and the kind of infrastructure such a course would need. Once we have the basic infrastructure in place, it may be useful to define a simple process or a set of guidelines for students as well as mentors to help them as they proceed with the course. It is very important to explain the learning methodology and it's benefits to the students and mentors. The students must understand right at the beginning that learning that is spoon fed is the most ineffective way of learning. The core process that they are to follow is learning by doing, and participating with other students, mentors, and practitioners. Traditional lectures would also be needed, but their purpose should be to introduce students to the topics and show them how to build on the knowledge by practicing and participating. The mentors should interact with the students through lectures, online groups, and blogs. The participation ...

From some time I have been thinking of the right way to teach a programming course. Something I have noticed from the way I learn, as well as by having taught Java to college students and corporate participants, is that programming is not learned well if it is detached from practice and discussion. In fact, practice and discussion are the most important aspects of learning how to program. Here are some numbers from the National Training Laboratories, Maine, USA, that point to how retention rates differ for different learning approaches. Research shows that discussion, practice, and teaching are the most effective ways to learn. My own learning experience also validates this finding. When I simply read about a programming technology, I might forget it in a few days, but when I practice it, the learning remains with me for longer, and when I teach something, I retain it for much longer, and even more importantly, I also grasp the fundamentals in a better way. All of these concepts ca...

A couple of days back, we conducted a training session for a client over the Internet using collaboration tools like Vyew, and Skype. An account of the details is posted on Webcast Academy's website (where I am an intern in the class of 1.2). Below is a summary of the discussion, posted as a podcast. [Time: 3 mins 15 secs] What are your views on online training? Feel free to write to me if you would like to try something similar for your organization. Notes: This text was originally posted on my earlier blog at http://www.adaptivelearningonline.net Here are the comments from the original post ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Ranjan EMAIL: URL: https://ranjanjha@blogspot.com DATE: 10/03/2006 12:02:34 PM Hi Sir I totally agree with you on this,Infact Sun's philosophy while marketting(I hope I am using the right word) java was " Write once, run anywhere"... obviously Sun was promoting a feature over here. Infact Software portablility has more todo with Microsoft...