Training and Travel in London

I have spent the majority of this month on training courses in London learning about .NET 2.0 and I am so glad it’s finally over.

Prior to going on the course I was looking forward to it as I saw it as a way to dos around London and I would finally get a chance to use the Out Of Office notification I have seen so many other people use.

The first few days of the course were very simple I spent most of the time just creating HTML tables and doing simple coding. I spent the majority of the course just following instructions out of a book. I was expecting more theory and to learn more new skills and ideas instead I did a few simple tasks. I didn’t get much time to fully look into or understand the tasks that were new to me I didn’t spend much time as I had to do the tasks.

My advice to anyone going on a Microsoft programming course is to find out what the course covers first and then to decide if you really need to learn that stuff, if you already know it then maybe think about skipping it or if you don’t get a book and read it first so you can grasp the concepts before attending the course.

All in all the courses weren’t too bad and I can see why people go on them, but what I really hated was the travel. I hated having to leave home really early in the morning and then getting a train into London and then having to ride the tube in rush hour.

I lived in London for the majority of my life and use to take the tube to school every now and then but for some reason it really seemed worse now. The tubes were packed there was very little room to move and getting out off was a huge problem as people just kept getting onto the tube without letting everyone off, it reminded me of an episode of The Simpsons were Homer and Apu are riding a train in India that is so packed that they were having to hang onto the outside of a moving carriage.

I think from now on I am going to avoid going on training courses in London. Maybe by that time I go on my next one (hopefully it will be a long time before I go on another) people north of Northampton will have broadband and I could go for a course there. :)