We run public Perl courses every 2 or 3 months at our Melksham, Wiltshire training centre, and private courses on site at customer offices at about the same frequency. Private Perl courses are tailored to customer's needs and may be almost anywhere - typically they're in the UK or Ireland, but occasionally much further afield. (The illustration is a from a private Perl course which I recently ran in Germany).

A string of good questions in the last few days ... and I've compiled a fresh FAQ to answer some of them:

Q - You do separate courses for newcomers to programming, and for delegates who are converting from another language for most of your subjects - but not for Perl. Why is that?

In the case of Perl, the course for newcomers to the language and for people who have programmed before (in languages like C and C++ perhaps) are combined. That's because - with Perl - we found that even delegates with prior experience of coding wanted to come on the extra lead in day rather than a four day course that assumed prior coding knowledge. We asked ourselves "why" and concluded it's because there are aspects of the Perl philosophy that are very different indeed, and people prefer to spend a day longer and be really sure that can learn everything properly from basics. And it works well.

Note - we also offer advanced Perl courses - see [here] for details of all public Perl courses.

Q - I see three sets of dates on your web site (for the rest of the year). Will there be any additional dates added?

There are very unlikely to be any additional dates; what's on the web site is pretty definite. If you had a group of 3 or more of you all wanting the same course at the same time, they we could lay an extra course on, and indeed a lot of our training IS private courses. But on the other side of the coin, you can be reassured that once you book we won't cancel / change the dates on you

Q - Do you use a standard textbook during the course - if so, which?

We write our own training notes - about 250 A4 side in Perl, which then forms a training manual. We have around 700 opens source books here at our training centre, for additional reference during the course. A surprising number of them (over 100) are about Perl or have major Perl sections - which means that while you're with us you can browse through the books and decide which are best suited to you - then order them, assured, online if you wish.

Q - What version of Perl do you cover?

The course is covering Perl 5. We'll have 5.8 and 5.10 on the systems we use for the course, and ensure that you're aware of the differences, and we've got an important section "looking forward to Perl 6". Perl is an interpretive language, which means that most users will write code in a version that they can be assured will be available on target distribution machines, so the move to Perl 6 (as it eventually hits a production release) will be very drawn out.

Q - Can we come on the course, but not pay until 90 days later

For well established organization with a good credit rating, we can offer extended terms - but we make an extra charge if you require credit beyond 28 days, and it must be requested at time of booking. See [here]

Q - Perl's been around for a long time - is it still a good language?

Yes.



(written 2010-04-23, updated 2010-06-23)

 P050 - Perl - General
  [3407] Perl - a quick reminder and revision. Test yourself! - (2011-08-26)
  [3332] DNA to Amino Acid - a sample Perl script - (2011-06-24)
  [3322] How much has Perl (and other languages) changed? - (2011-06-10)
  [3093] How many toilet rolls - hotel inventory and useage - (2010-12-18)
  [2971] Should the public sector compete with businesses? and other deep questions - (2010-09-26)
  [2825] Perl course - is it tailored to Linux, or Microsoft Windows? - (2010-06-25)
  [2783] The Perl Survey - (2010-05-27)
  [2504] Learning to program in ... - (2009-11-15)
  [2374] Lead characters on Perl variable names - (2009-08-24)
  [2242] So what is this thing called Perl that I keep harping on about? - (2009-06-15)
  [2228] Where do I start when writing a program? - (2009-06-11)
  [1897] Keeping on an even keel - (2008-11-21)
  [1750] Glorious (?) 12th August - what a Pe(a)rl! - (2008-08-12)
  [743] How to debug a Perl program - (2006-06-04)
  [400] New in the shops - (2005-08-01)
  [116] The next generation of programmer - (2004-11-13)

G300 - Well House Consultants - Public Courses
  [3573] New in Java 7 - and why we are not running public Java 7 courses - (2012-01-08)
  [3559] Well House Consultants - Open Source Programming Courses for 2012 - (2011-12-21)
  [3528] December courses - PHP, Python, Perl - and a weekend Lua course - (2011-11-24)
  [3401] Open Source Training Schedule - learn a programming language - in Autumn 2011 or 2012 - (2011-08-20)
  [3365] Turning bright delegates into bright and knowledgable ones - (2011-07-21)
  [3358] Upcoming Programming courses ... High Summer, 2011 - (2011-07-15)
  [3219] How do I become a Linux System Administrator? - (2011-03-28)
  [3205] Open Source (Public) courses - PHP, Tcl, SQL, Python, C and C++ in Melksham, Wiltshire, UK - (2011-03-18)
  [3160] Extra courses - Advanced PHP, MySQL and Lua - (2011-02-07)
  [3129] Extra courses - C and C++ - (2011-01-12)
  [3078] Royal Wedding. How William and Catherine have changed our schedule - (2010-12-02)
  [3074] Running a course ... what if the tutor isn't well? - (2010-11-29)
  [3071] Well House Price list, January to March 2011 - (2010-11-25)
  [3021] Courses for late 2010 and early 2011 - (2010-10-30)
  [2965] Testimonials - Well House Consultants Open Source courses - (2010-09-21)
  [2942] Open Source Programming - Training Course Schedule - (2010-08-31)
  [2928] Public (scheduled) or private course? Book direct, or through a third party? - (2010-08-19)
  [2927] Announcing 2011 Open Source Training courses - dates and prices - (2010-08-18)
  [2881] Tailoring of courses to meet customers needs - how it works - (2010-07-21)
  [2839] Software versions used - June 2010 - (2010-06-30)
  [2558] Happy new decade - and course and hotel prices for 2010 - (2010-01-01)
  [2341] Koulutus, Open Source tietokone kielillä - (2009-08-09)
  [2340] ldning, Open Source dator språk - (2009-08-09)
  [2339] Opplæring, Open Source datamaskinen språk - (2009-08-09)
  [2338] Uddannelse, Open Source computer sprog - (2009-08-09)
  [2337] Opleiding, Open Source computertalen - (2009-08-09)
  [2336] Formação, Open Source computador línguas - (2009-08-09)
  [2335] Ausbildung, die Open-Source-Sprachen - (2009-08-09)
  [2334] Formazione, Open Source computer lingue - (2009-08-09)
  [2333] Formación, de los lenguajes de código abierto - (2009-08-09)
  [2332] Formation, des langages Open Source - (2009-08-09)
  [2048] Learning to program in PHP, Python, Java or Lua ... - (2009-02-19)
  [1968] Review of 2008 - (2008-12-31)
  [1929] 2009 - Hotel, Meeting, Training Course prices - (2008-12-07)
  [1857] November and December Public Course Schedule - (2008-10-27)
  [1836] Next in the sequence - courses next year (2009) - (2008-10-12)
  [1751] Public Training Course Dates until July 2009 - (2008-08-13)
  [1693] July to December 2008 - Open Source training schedule - (2008-07-01)
  [1615] PHP training courses every month - (2008-04-18)
  [1565] Languages compared - based on developer community size - (2008-03-05)
  [1420] The Learning Perl crew, October 2007 - (2007-11-03)
  [1414] What we teach - expained for the non-technical - (2007-10-28)
  [1035] Longer hours and better value courses - (2007-01-15)
  [933] Course Joining package - updated - (2006-11-20)
  [845] Course scheduling and Geekmas - are they traditions yet? - (2006-08-26)
  [646] PHP - London course, Melksham Course, Evening course - (2006-03-14)
  [387] Training course plans for 2006 - (2005-07-23)
  [181] Maximum number of trainees on a course - (2005-01-18)
  [172] Public courses in London - (2005-01-07)

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Melksham Hustings at George Ward School
Melksham Scouts
What is all this SESSION stuff about? (PHP)
Improving your function calls (APIs) - General and PHP
Perl Course FAQ
Type checking, Java arrays and collections
for and foreach in Java
Travel Troubles and Jesus again
Asking about Jesus
Training Courses - time of change