LEARNING CURVE - Java Education

Finding ways to keep abreast of the latest developments could prove to be a learning process in itself. Guy Clapperton has trouble getting a Java education.

With Java still so early in its development phase there remainsrove to be a learning process in itself. Guy Clapperton has trouble getting a Java education. confusion over how it will fit into the overall IT scheme of things. Will the corporate world adopt it, will it be the success Sun wants it to be?

All of these are vital points, but from the punter's point of view the question has to be: 'Where do I train for it?'

The answer appears straightforward, at first - go to whichever local training company offers a Java course, and enrol. After this you simply get a piece of paper and call yourself qualified. While this may be true in the future, at the present time it is not. Java is very, very new, and as such the courses that offer accreditations are a little untried.

A useful starting point must therefore be Sun itself; specifically Sun Educational Services, which has begun to offer formal Java accreditations in the same way that Microsoft can issue an MSCIE and Novell will anoint you a CNE. Sun has two counterparts for Java: Sun Certified Java Programmer and Sun Certified Java Developer. The one precedes the other - you have to be a certified programmer before you can become a developer.

Simon Maskrey, sales and marketing manager for Sun Education, cheerfully admitted the influence of Novell in the development of any accreditation at all, and saw it as part of his job to ensure that the Sun equivalents eventually reach the same sort of status. "I don't think I'm doing the company any major disservice when I say we haven't been loud enough about it yet."

A learning experience

Sun's approach is slightly different to that used by most companies who offer training in their own technology. For a start, you don't have to undergo any training to become a certified programmer - if you have the right experience and believe you can hack it, you can start with the exam, and if you appear to know enough, you can qualify on the spot. If you want to go for the higher qualification it's different, too; instead of simply sitting a course and an exam, you have to develop an application in Java and have it evaluated - that's a real application that has to work correctly.

All in all it sounds very exciting, which is why a lot of companies have started offering Java courses. There is a danger, though, with so many people interested in the technology and so many companies coming on-stream with course offerings, of coming unstuck by signing up with someone who turns out to be a cowboy. There are ways of avoiding the time-wasters and the poor tutoring they offer, and these are worth noting. David Holden, head of strategic development at ICL training subsidiary Peritas, suggested asking the obvious question: "Are the courses accredited by Sun, and what relationship exists between Sun and the supplier?"

Charles Caudle, managing director of Comtec, added that it is a useful idea to set your objectives slightly ahead of what you are likely to need.

"Does the course prepare you for Sun certification? And does the trainer have a Sun qualification?"

All of these questions would be far simpler to answer had Sun been a little more thorough regarding its own policy on accredited centres. It has licensed course materials on offer - both Comtec and Peritas offer these, as do a number of other training companies - but there is, as yet, no Sun equivalent of the Novell Authorised Education Centre. "If you want training that comes from Sun and carries our full authorisation, at the moment it has to come from us," confirmed Maskrey. Will that ever change?

They are looking at it. It's a very new field and it is still evolving.

Choosing a teacher

So just how many good quality tutors are out there as yet? Caudle did not perceive any major problem with supply and demand, but cautions buyers against the bargain basement brigade. "(Skilled Java trainers) are just as hard to come by as skilled trainers in any other language - that is you can find them but the availability is scarce." This is compounded, he explained, by the fact that programmers tend to earn more from programming than they do from training, so if they are any good at it the chances are they will be hard to tempt away for any length of time. Caudle's answer is to throw money at the problem: "You can find them if you are prepared to pay, but then the quality of what you get in teaching terms, if you are seducing a mushroom-head away from what he likes doing best, will quite possibly be wanting."

So, if programmers want to stick with programming, or aren't all that good at communicating and are therefore brilliant at their job but lousy tutors, where else can you start? Computer-based training can be a reasonable standby, but a CBT specialist, Key Computers, found the sheer pace of Java development was becoming a problem.

"Java was moving forward so fast a CD could be out of date within three to six months," said director Martyn Kinch. Key's answer was to sell subscriptions rather than standalone CDs, and it now has a lot of corporates on its books as a result - NatWest, Barclays and Abbey Life are all customers.

In many ways, Kinch's experience mirrors the difficulties everyone is likely to have with learning Java for the foreseeable future - it's changing, and changing very quickly. Even the Sun qualifications are not set in stone - Maskrey was excited about the prospect of including more components as the product matures; having elective sections so that the customer can become a different sort of Java expert depending on his or her preference.

Currently, though, there is no timescale available, so it is far from clear when to take the plunge and get qualified.

But then that's the whole of the Java market in a nutshell. The technology is exciting, there is a bedrock of users out there and the applications are starting to fall into place, but the huge corporate uptake has yet to happen.