• Good interaction
• Good CV/Resume value

• Run at speed of slowest student
• Very Expensive
• Difficult to preview
• Some bad instructors

As veteran programmers, it is our experience that classroom-based programming courses are rather hit and miss in their effectiveness. A lot is dependant on;

• the number and aptitude of fellow students,
• how contemporary the instructor's experience is,
• and how enthusiastic they are about their subject

While there are some excellent training instructors out there, the fact remains that in order to have developed good training skills, they have had to be out of commercial development for some time. This is a particular problem for subject matter like Java which has a rapidly evolving set of technologies associated with it.

As a result we have looked at a number of e-learning courses and found that they are similarly hit-and-miss, but that it is easier to detect the good'uns from the bad'uns. Also we find the style of e-learning is more programmer-friendly, there's none of that breaking-the-ice nonsense you get in a class-room, and we can fit training around our other professional (or personal) commitments.