Thoughts on Eclipse RCP Training

At EclipseCon I had the opportunity to sit down with Wayne Beaton and record a podcast on Eclipse RCP training. It’s really not a sales pitch kind of thing, more of a discussion of the challenges faced by developers new to RCP.

But after we finished recording, it occurred to me that I’ve never really expressed what I feel the value of Eclipse RCP training is. It’s common for developers to approach me and say “I know I need RCP training, but how do I justify this to my manager?” Well for those of you in this situation, here is what I would say.

Time is money

The first argument is a purely financial one. It’s just a fact that acquiring knowledge takes time and effort. If you spend days or weeks at your desk assembling information on RCP from websites, articles and books, then your salary during this time is the cost of knowledge. The question is, how does this approach compare with learning from an instructor?

According to many of my students, learning RCP in a classroom is much more effective. There are a variety of reasons for this, which I’ll get to in a minute. But it seems to be true for most people that training significantly shortens the RCP learning curve. I’ve taught many classes over the past few years, and based on student feedback I’d say that RCP training often pays for itself in weeks, not months.

RCP is hard to learn

One of the main reasons RCP training is so effective is that the subject area is complicated. Unlike other technologies, RCP is not standards-based, so there is no canonical spec you can go to for answers. To be honest, RCP is less a coherent framework than an aggregation of related technologies (SWT, JFace, OSGi, Eclipse Platform).

The problem for someone learning RCP is where to start and how to acquire knowledge in a coherent and orderly way. What RCP training does (if it’s done well) is to cut through the noise and present a clear vision of what RCP is and how to use it.

Getting a team up to speed

Oftentimes RCP is introduced to a team by a self-taught lead developer who evangelizes the technology. When the decision is made to use RCP, the lead developer is often called upon to share his knowledge with the rest of the team.

The problem is that most developers are not (and do not want to be) teachers. Creating carefully designed presentations and labs is difficult. Communicating the information clearly to students with a variety of backgrounds and learning styles is even more difficult.

The real magic to being a good teacher is to remember what it was like to not know something. This might sound like a zen koan, but it’s really just another way of describing empathy. If you find a good trainer, I think you’ll be impressed by what this magic can accomplish.

Why can’t I just read a book?

This is a really good question. It’s obviously true that some people can learn RCP by reading books. That’s how I learned. But a better question is could you learn more effectively through a training course?

I’d argue that a training courses is more effective than books for a number of reason. First, students have a variety of learning styles. Some learn by hearing, some by seeing, some by doing, most from a combination of all of these. Only a training course can communicate information in all of these ways. Second, a multi-day training course appears to function something like immersion-learning for a foreign language. While people usually read books a bit at a time, there is a distinct advantage to focusing all or your mental energy on a subject for 3-4 days straight.

Speaking empirically, I’ve had more than a few students tell me that they’ve read books but that things didn’t click until they took the course. Whatever this click is, it appears to be what students need to get started working productively with RCP.

From http://rcpquickstart.com/