I believe in openness and transparency when it comes to feedback on my courses. And while I usually solicit detailed feedback from students at the end of a course, I thought it might also be useful to provide a place for public comments.
So if you have been a student at one of my courses, feel free to write what you please. The only thing I ask is that you supply your name (or initials) and your company name so that I can weed out spam comments. Thanks for taking the time to comment!
If you are looking for Eclipse RCP or OSGi training, I hope the comments below will help you assess whether my courses are worthwhile.
To get things started, here are a few of the comments I’ve received in the past 2 and a half years:
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Great course! Excellent materials and presentations. I can take what I learned and start applying it directly to my current project. Patrick provided great depth on the topics that were covered and was able to discuss off-topic areas as well. There is no question that Patrick knew what he was talking about. His technical expertise in the area was reflected in all areas of the course and everything was done very professionally.
Matt Aument
Praxis Engineering
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I am quite impressed with Patrick’s technical expertise. He has demonstrated the ability to take a complex subject like RCP and break it down into easy understandable steps. Without this course I don’t think we would have been able to finish our project on time.
Wendy Shi
Advanced Micro Devices
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RCP Quickstart is a winner. The class did a great job of spanning the breadth and depth of the Eclipse platform, but the highlight of the class was its effective use of labs. Each of the ten sessions (five morning, five afternoon) were evenly split between lecture and lab, and each lab not only applied the concepts from the preceding lecture, but built naturally upon the prior lab.
Ken Peressini
Software Manager
SAS Institute
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We hired Patrick Paulin to teach the RCP Quickstart Course to 13 developers over 3 days and then for RCP consulting for the last 2 days of the week. One of our developers had deep knowledge of RCP before the course and everyone else was brand new to it. The course was worth every penny.
The course material was extremely well organized and Patrick presented it very clearly. He was able to explain RCP in simple enough terms for all the newbies to understand it, but he has so much technical depth that our experienced RCP developer was able to ask advanced questions and got some valuable information out of the course too.
For 2 days Patrick worked with our experienced RCP developer. He made suggestions for ways we could layout our RCP code better to make future development easier and give us more flexibility in the future. Patrick is just a really nice guy and really easy to work with.
If you are developing an RCP application and need someone to shorten the learning curve for your developers, or you want some expert advice on how to structure your application, Patrick is an excellent choice.
Tyler Sims
Director of Engineering
Codefast Inc.
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The RCP Quickstart course was everything we hoped it would be. The mix of presented material and hands-on labs hit on all of the key areas and were structured in very digestible segments. Both those already familiar with the platform as well as those just starting came away with an increased comfort level in the technology. Patrick presented the material with an expert knowledge of the concepts and backed it up with consulting experiences. Too often this type of training lacks a real-world and best-practice perspective. Patrick makes it a point to not just regurgitate api documentation but highlight features both good and bad and explain clearly how you use them to build successful applications. I would highly recommend this course to anyone building Eclipse RCP applications.
Jason Ladd
Technical Architect
Fidelity National Information Services
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We engaged Patrick Paulin of Syntax Consulting to present his course on Eclipse RCP (RCP Quickstart) to our group of developers. Of the 6 people attending only one had some knowledge of RCP, the others were new to both RCP and Java.
The course material was comprehensive yet presented in a way that allowed all attendees to follow the concepts being presented. Patrick’s in-depth knowledge of and experience with RCP also allowed our more experienced developer to gain a deeper understanding and insight into the more advanced topics of RCP. Patrick has an easy going style that allowed our developers to feel relaxed and comfortable.
We engaged Patrick for a further two days after the course to help us better understand how we could best position our new project within the RCP framework.
If you’re new to RCP and need a ‘jumpstart’ or are looking for an experienced RCP architect/resource then I highly recommend Patrick.
Andrew du Preez
Development Manager
RiskAdvisory – Division of SAS
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Patrick helped me with Best Practices in RCP applications and showed me several tricks of the trade. This was instrumental in getting my first RCP project correctly on track. We used a remote desktop sharing and teleconferencing setup that worked great and saved travel costs. I recommend Patrick’s expertise to anyone who is looking to jump start their RCP application development process.
Rob Hafernik
Site Controls, Inc
RCP Quickstart is an excellent course to jump start development in RCP. Patrick is an excellent teacher and extremely well organized. His presentation of material
was excellent. I would highly recommend this course for new as well as experienced RCP developers.
Dhiresh Patel
WORLDPAC
Just finished the online RCP Quickstart training with Patrick. I couldn’t be happier with the instructor, materials and labs. Makes me wonder why I would travel to do any future training :-) The remote interaction was just as effective as face to face IMHO, and I could sleep in my own bed! Highly recommended. We are now ready to tackle our RCP project.
Jim Hargrave
Fresh trained by Patrick on RCP. Was the best learning experience ever and first time online. Remembered Neo in the Matrix taking the online kung fu course :).
Tons of time saved. Complicate things made easy.
Patrick is a great teacher cause he’s not afraid of saying “I don’t know”. But those were minor things far away from the subject, and it turned out he did know them.
Thanks, Patrick. Great job.
Sergei Vasilyev
Just had a 3 day RCP online training, it was awesome!
The course format was excellent, and the course material was presented very clearly. It was easy to follow since Patrick highlights the relevant part of the slides as he goes along, plus we got handouts of the slides in advance, with notes, so we could prepare, and later focus on the talk. Additionally, during the lab work, we were able to share our desktop with Patrick when we needed some help.
Part of our team works remotely so this online format was perfect for us!
Patrick is also very knowledgeable, and answered right away many questions that we had, which were outside the original scope.
Thanks Patrick! I look forward to working with you again!
Patrick did an excellent job with our RCP training. We accomplished quite a bit more with the training than I expected to cover/build. I really enjoyed the hands-on materials as it dispelled some of my fears about JFace/SWT/RCP development.
Patrick also expertly answered our many questions beyond the scope of the material. He either knew the answer already or pointed us to the resources which dealt with the subject. This is the first time I was not able to stump the teacher. Nice job!
I can confidently recommend this course highly to anyone interested in RCP.
Before taking this class I had been developing with Eclipse RCP for about a month. Using online tutorials and internet searches left me with many questions. This course answered all of those question and made me much more comfortable as a developer writing RCP applications.
I was very impressed with Patrick’s expertise and his ability to clearly explain and demonstrate the fundamentals of Eclipse RCP. Great job!
I took the RCP Quickstart class online and it more than met my expectations: Patrick (the instructor) covered the topics very thoroughly and I particularly liked the format of the class.
The class is broken into 4 sections a day (lecture, hands-on lab, lecture, hands-on lab). I really liked that we did not have the lab only at the end of the day because a) it is a nice to get a break from the lecture mid-day and try out some of the things you learned and b) If there was a big chunk of lab time at the end I would not have stayed as focused to finish them all.
This online class lacks nothing in comparison to on-site training classes because the size of the class is small, the notes for the class are exceptional and you can ask any question at any time. Patrick answered all my questions on issues I have faced in my RCP app and when there was a complex answer he followed up with code snippets by email!
I was very happy with Patrick’s passion and level of expertise not only in Eclipse plugin development and RCP but also in the maven-based build “tycho” which my team uses. I highly recommend this class to anyone who wants to learn RCP in a very fast and effective way.
If your having trouble getting your teeth into RCP, I strongly suggest that you take Patrick’s Quickstart online course to help you flatten the RCP learning curve. For those of you wondering about taking the course online – my personal analysis after taking the course was that for me it was actually a BETTER way to take the course than taking it in a traditional classroom setting. Besides the travel costs, the online course allowed me to work with my own Eclipse setup from the comfort of my own home. I would say that the online setup actually improves the learning environment. The classroom “blackboard” was MY screen. If I had a question, I’d simply share my screen and then Patrick would walk me through the issue that I was having trouble with until the light finally “turned on” for me. The setup allowed for easy switching between lesson materials and a live Eclipse Workspace where Patrick would demonstrate issues that we were having trouble understanding making sure that we understood each topic before moving on.
Patrick teaching style is very personal, it’s like you have your own private RCP tutor. He’s very passionate about helping each of his students gain a grasp of the RCP issues that will help them become a better RCP developer. His depth of knowledge on RCP, OSGI, and Best Practices in RCP programming is very impressive and won’t leave you wanting more detailed information on any of the RCP topics in the course.
I have been struggling for more than a year with RCP making frustratingly little progress. I can truly say that I gained more meaningful, real world RCP knowledge in 3 days than I did in over an entire year of trial and error. If you’re trying to learn RCP and it’s going slower than you’d like, I’d strongly suggest that you sign-up for Patrick’s course, you won’t regret it.
I was a little bit hesitated to register this online course, but it turned out more than met my expectations. The course was very well planned and executed. The material was excellent and very organized. I was impressed with Patrick’s technical expertise; he instantly knew what wrong with my code or my RCP lab setting. I would say Patrick is the RCP guru.
This online course was even better than a traditional classroom setting. I feel like having my own private RCP tutor. It was worth the money and it is the best online course I’ve ever had.