E-Learning Providers for Software Developers

by Dmitry Kirsanov 24. January 2013 22:00

I get this question quite frequently – what are, in my opinion, the best e-learning providers for software developers. So, here is my top, sorted by effectiveness:

  1. Pluralsight
  2. AppDev
  3. Lynda.com
  4. Career Academy
  5. TrainSignal (non-developers)
  6. Channel9, MVA and others

Note, that none of the top 5 are free, they all provide professional grade training courses with varying degree of effectiveness. In most cases, variation is insignificant, but the ratio of brilliant works resembles the position in this top.

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The Price of Effective Training

by Dmitry Kirsanov 21. December 2012 00:00

I’ve finished an experiment today. For a bit more than a week I was going to prepare myself for a Microsoft certification exam 70-480, which is about HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. I had good prior knowledge of HTML 4, some basic JavaScript and (as I thought) good enough CSS. However, this was about the next, more advanced level.

The experiment was simple – even though I had access to quite expensive courses and official training materials, I was only going to use free video training created by Microsoft, which is available for everyone at Channel9. And what do you know? 900 / 1000.

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Infographic: New Microsoft Certification Roadmap

by Dmitry Kirsanov 21. November 2012 10:07

MicrosoftCertificationMapWith upcoming retirement of nearly all its exams, Microsoft created a new roadmap for the upcoming certifications for all kinds of specialties, including Microsoft Office, System Administration, SQL Server and Software Development. Here is the latest map in PDF format. As always, you can get all the latest information at Microsoft’s official learning website. More...

Automating Deployment of Hyper-V based Microsoft Labs

by Dmitry Kirsanov 6. October 2012 14:22

Microsoft Certified Trainer logoThis article is about free software I made to automate the deployment of exported Hyper-V machines. More precisely – Hyper-V machines of labs for Microsoft Official Curriculums (MOC), used by students at Microsoft official training classes. It should be interesting for MCTs (i.e. Microsoft Certified Trainers) out there, whose job is to deploy labs in form of Hyper-V virtual machines, as well as for system administrators having the same duty of periodic installation of Hyper-V virtual machines. The installation procedure of a pack of Hyper-V machines could be extremely time consuming. Or should I say - used to be.

I will speak about it as about the solution for a lab deployment problem, but if you are working with other virtual machines, just think about the similarities with your scenario.

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Why e-Learning Is Better

by Dmitry Kirsanov 23. December 2011 13:37

Tree of KnowledgeBold title for an article, as it implies that I am not going to analyze the advantages of the subject but to prove right from the start why it is what I think it is. But the truth is – the question about e-Learning usually sounds exactly like that – why e-Learning is better, not “is it better at all” – people need an answer and they need it fast. So – here it is.

For about 3 years I’ve been working as senior mentor at New Horizons training center. I was training different kinds of people – established IT professionals and students, people coming to IT from other areas and even few ex-schoolboys. The training experience was the most precious part of that job. More...