Renoir,

Here's a couple of tidbits from my "Newbie to Guru: Effective Strategies for Learning" session from the Orlando DevCon.

1. Eat at someone else's table: When I was growing up, I never tasted chili because my mother never made it. In fact, I never heard of it, and never knew what it was. Lesson: Be sure to expose yourself to other ways of doing things by exposing yoursef to other people. If folks on your job are supposed to ask a co-worker, how/where would the co-worker learn? At my previous job we had to kick all the users out of the app during prime time to copy in a new version. It was a circus. Then I started my "outside" learning program and was introduced to the concept of a "loader" application. This has saved my current employer a lot of headaches. If I hadn't started learning "outside" my job, I never would have thought of it.


2. Read the stuff that has nothing to do with the current project or problem. When you get to the next one you'll already know it and won't have to take the time. This may not apply to you as much since you're a contractor, and not an employee. Employees should definitely invest in themselves on company time. Contractors should at least invest in themselves on their own time, and the hopefully the investment will be reflected in their rate on the next contract.

3. There's a lot that's not in the Help, or not easy to find. An example of this is techniques for multi-child reports. You'll find discussions of how to do things like that here and on the Wiki, or find references to techniques like that. Jim Booth's N-Tier paper isn't in the Help, and neither is Craig Berntson's discussion of Primary Keys. All of that info is probably in the Help somewhere but not all together or as nicely explained as what Craig and Jim have written.

One more thing, be sure they weren't told this because they were spending the wrong amounts of time "surfing" and that the goal of the boss's remark was not to nix outside learning but to put his foot down on people who were not getting their work done. Perhaps a friendly conversaion with the boss (first hand) would clear this up.

Nancy Folsom remarked that she spent "company" time on the UT but did not spend "company" time discussing the latest sports scores, so she thought it evened out.


>I was talking with some of the employees at a relatively new contract I have and they said that the boss (not exactly pointy-haired, but close) told them that they shouldn't look for answers for Foxpro issues on UT because it was a waste of their time; they should already know the answer or ask their coworkers or look it up in the help. I have been using UT as an extension of all the books, help and coworkers on site. He knows this, but never says anything to me as he sees the level I'm producing at. I think I would still be coding in FPW if it hadn't been for this environment. I'm curious if others have seen similar issues with management views on using internet (or UT specifically) as an ongoing Foxpro resource for their jobs. In some defense of the boss, I will say that it is addictive and I spend a certain amount of time (won't say how much) checking stuff out that has nothing to do with a current problem or even relevant to the department's projects. I still firmly believe that the client is better off for what I have learned to resolve issues, but I don't know...a little bit of contractor guilt going on perhaps...
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>Regards, Renoir