ADV: FP Survivor Series - follow on

[John Esak]

Just a quick note to say the talking description of The Survivor Series is
working again. Many of you hit the website and let me know that the Wizard
was not "talking". Sorry, all fixed. This is the only place where I actually
describe _why_ it is called the Survivor Series... so it was important to me
that it be working properly.

It hasn't stopped many of you from buying the series, but I didn't want
anyone else to think I put up a strange wizard pointing to an animated
computer screen with only a button saying "Continue". There's a good 3
minutes of explanation coming out of him now... (soon, he too, will be
animated...  Why not, it all goes with the "slick". :-)

A couple folks talked to me on the phone today to ask if the Tutorial set
would be good to train new programmers for their shop. Honestly, there is NO
better reason for the existence of these CD's. They will take anyone from
scratch to being a really good filePro programmer. They will take an already
programmer-bent person who knows something in other disciplines or languages
to the very same point. If you have too much filePro work to do, and you
want to train someone really "fast" on filePro. This is it. Someone could
ramp up to production level programming in just a few sessions with these
CD's. The series is quite long (many, many hours), but it can be gotten
through in just a few days with a concerted effort. I recommend taking a
whole 5 day work week to go from scratch to serious filePro programmer...
but it can/cold be done sooner I guess.

That's the first main question... and the answer is a definite YES. This is
what you want to bring on a new programmer into your business.

Second main question is "I already know all about filePro programming. I've
been doing it for years. Do I really need all the CD's? Can't I just buy the
Advanced one?

Well, I am certainly not arrogant enough (contrary to popular opinion :-) to
tell you that it doesn't matter how much you know, these CD's will teach you
something.... But, I have found with the few people I've sent out beta
copies to, that even though some of them already knew filePro quite well...
that they enjoyed taking the course from the beginning. Why?  Because, while
I'm going over the basics of how to do this and that, we are constantly
building an accounting application. At any point, even at the simplest
beginner level, I may bring up a function or feature of filePro that
everyone would say is purely "advanced". If it fits and it can be understood
at that point... I bring it up and use it. I do not think of filePro in
these simple terms of Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced... in fact, I
think that is quite a stupid way to organize things. I've only used that
paradigm to conform to what everyone can accept and understand. Truly, these
courses range far and wide throughout. I never, ever bring up a function or
procedure to help explain things if that function or procedure has not been
properly  addressed before... that is why there is no previous programming
or filePro knowledge required for these CD's... but, I certainly move
through any command or topic that is needed at that point in the learning
process to get the ideas of filePro across. The whole set is cohesive and
planned to move from the beginning (where you know nothing) to the end (the
Advanced) where you know quite a lot, but all levels , all topics happen in
between.

I actually ask whoever buys this thing to start at the beginning. Why not?
It isn't that I think  you might learn something you don't know... but it
will give you a good feeling for the entire approach I have to filePro
design, and by the time you get to the Advanced CD, we will all be on the
same page with the same recently covered topics.  Sure, you can jump around,
that is part of the beauty of these CD's... but without question, going
through them in order will do more for you than any other method of using
them. I could be wrong... why not let me know how they suit you and your
uses. I think to get a good idea of what is happening, you might pop the
Intermediate disk in and see just how much was covered by the Beginning
course... you might find yourself deciding it wouldn't be such a bad idea to
go check it out. Try the same with the Advanced... but if you don't want to
waste time... just get started at the first CD and zoom through the lessons.
It can't hurt...

The Series can be found at:  www.valar.com/training

John Esak
The FP Room www.tinyurl.com/97y9u 24/7

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