FAQ(Frequently Asked Questions) on javapassion.com courses

 
Please read this FAQ first before you post a question to the class alias (or before you send an email to Sang Shin)!

Regarding the conversion of "javapassion.com" into "paid subscription" service

1. What are the reasons behind the decision of converting "javapassion.com" into "paid" subscription based service?
2. When is the site going to be converted into "paid" subscription service? Can I start now?
   
3. What value do I get from the "paid" subscription service?
4. Will there be any free contents after the conversion?
   
5. Will there be a student discount?
6. I am living in non-U.S/European countries.  And $89 subscription fee per year is too expensive for me. Is it possible to get a discount or free subscription?
7. I am unemployed at the moment.  Can I get a discount?
8. Is there a money back guarantee?
9. I was not able to submit all the homework assignments before the conversion date.  Should I resubmit them after the conversion?
10. Is it possible for me to offer my help to "javapassion.com" in exchange of free subscription?
    
11. When will "javapassion.com" courses start again?
12. My company needs a training in Java technologies (or any technology covered in javapassion.com.) Can you provide instructor-led training?
13. My company is interested in buying training material from javapassion.com.  Is that possible?
    

Regarding the conversion of "Javapassion.com" into "Paid subscription" service

• As a consequence of recent Sun/Oracle merger, I (Sang Shin) left Sun/Oracle .
  
• As it currently stands, I see there are two choices at the moment regarding "javapassion.com".  The first choice is killing it because it is highly unlikely that I can afford the cost and time anymore if I get another full-time job.  The second choice is maintaining and improving it using my own money and time meaning it will be my full-time job.  I happened to choose the latter for now.  
  
• I feel immensely grateful to my former employer, Sun Microsystem, for giving me an opportunity working as a Java technology evangelist, which in turn allowed me to work on "javapassion.com" in my spare time in the past.

• As it currently stands, I am moving forward with March 17th, 2010 as the new conversion target date.  It could be sooner or later depending on how the conversion work goes.
• You are welcome to start a course right now (and start submitting homeworks if you want to), then when the site is converted, you can do the registration and subscription.
  

• What you get from the yearly subscription is pretty much what you get right now for free. (Yes, I know I am not a good salesman saying this. But I want to be upfront and honest in every possible way I can.)
• Basically with a subscription, you have "unlimited access" to all existing and new courses in javapassion.com.  You can take these courses as many times as you want.
• The "javapassion.com" certificate has no affiliation with any institution or company. Having said that, "javapassion.com" is relatively well known in my opinion, there are many cases in which people were able to made advancements in their career because they were able to show "javapassion.com" certificates and prove what they've learned. (I wish I had saved all those emails I received.)
• Based on market research we've done, there are no other sites out there which offer  the type of service that "javapassion.com" provides with the price tag we are suggesting. But I will let you be the judge on this.
  

• I am giving a thought to this.  

• I am giving a thought to this.   I am not sure if there is a good scheme to handle this, however.

• I am giving a thought to this.

• I am trying to find a way to implement this. 
  

Taking "javapassion.com" Courses

• Online attendees of this course are expected to do the following coursework at the convenient time of their choice
  • Read pre-class reading material (if there is some) or tutorials mentioned under resources section of each topic at the convenient time of their choice - the dates are specified only as a guideline
    
  • Read the presentation slides 
  • Do the hands-on lab (those are the most important contents)
    
  • Do weekly homework - the due date of all homework tasks is about two weeks after the final class of the current session so you have plenty of time to finish them - for example, if a course runs from March 1st, 2009 to Sep. 10th, 2009, the due date of all homework tasks is Sep. 24th, 2009 midnight U.S. Eastern Time
    
  • Participate in class email alias for asking and answering questions or starting discussions. 
    
• At this time, I don't have any plan (nor resource) to offer real-time webcasting
  

• It is my plan to offer each javapassion.com online courses on a regular basis maybe twice a year of course if time permits
  
• A subsequent session will get started roughly 6 to 8 weeks after the previous session ends.  The exact date will be announced at each course's website and through each course's email alias.

• You can take this course at your own pace, indeed.  The dates are there mainly as a guideline.
• I am also using the dates as the dates I post the final version of the course contents -  presentation slides, hands-on labs, and homeworks.   
  

• Even though most contents are ready for downloading even before the dates, there are some contents that might not be ready until the dates specified, especially new topics of a new course.

• No, you don't have to wait.  You can register anytime.  You can study the material and submit homework even before the starting date.
  

• Yes.  You can register anytime before the class ends and as long as you submit all your homework tasks before the deadline (2 weeks after the last class), you are considered to be in the class.

• No. You can just send homework you have not done since I keep homework submitted for 2 years

Using and Helping javapassion.com courses

• Usage of javapassion.com course contents is free for non-profit organizations, which includes schools, colleges & universities, JUGs, etc.  Please let Sang Shin (sangshinpassion@gmail.com) know if you are using them, however.
  
• There is a fee for the usage of javapassion.com course contents for internal training for a for-profit company or for external training by a training/consulting company. Please contact Sang Shin (sangshinpassion@gmail.com) for details.
• If you have other usage case, please send an email to Sang Shin (sangshinpassion@gmail.com).

• There are already some efforts of translating javapassion.com into languages other than English. Please send an email to Sang Shin (sangshinpassion@gmail.com) if you would like to participate in translation effort.
• For translation into Spanish, there are already people who are doing it.  Please join http://groups.google.com/group/javaeespanish.
• For translation into Portuguese, please check http://groups.google.com.br/group/javapassion-portuguesebr

• There are many things you can help with.  Please contact me (sangshinpassion@gmail.com).
  

Regarding Communicating with Sang Shin

• The answer is unfortunately "NO".  Not because I don't want to respond to you but because I simply don't have time to do so.  The reality is that if I take the questions directly sent to me and try to answer them, I will  probably have to quit my job or give up working on other important tasks such as creating and updating javapassion.com course contents. 
  
• I am teaching javapassion.com online courses in my spare time and the combination of my daytime job, which is actually pretty demanding - who else's is not? :-) -, with javapassion.com work virtually leaves no time - I have to use whatever extra time I have for essential activities such as eating, sleeping, etc.  :-) So if you don't receive any response from me, it is nothing personal. 
  
• In general, posting questions (technical or non-technical) to the class alias (instead of sending it directly to me) is a strongly recommended practice.  And large percentage of the questions are the ones that are already answered in this FAQ.
  
• However, please feel to send me "mistakes"/"typo" you find in the course contents - specifying <which course>, <which lab>, <which exercise>, <description of the problem> in the email.  Thanks much.

Homework

• "Where to", "what files", and "how" to submit homework are described at the end of each hands-on lab.  For example, for the class of "Web Application Structure" topic of Java EE programming course, homework is specified at the end of hands-on lab of the same topic.
  
  • http://www.javapassion.com/handsonlabs/webappstructure/#Homework_Exercise
    

• It depends on the course.  Please go to the course website for course specific prerequisites.

• NetBeans 6.5.1 or 6.7.
  

• Each hands-on lab has homework exercise at the end.
  

• Each hands-on lab has "where to send" and "what to send" information at the end of the document.
  

• If you submitted all the homework tasks, you will be given a certificate.
• The certificate has no affiliation with any colleges, educational institution, company.  Instead, it is just my personal recognition that you have done your share of work, thus successfully finished the course.
• You will be noted as "Graduates of the course" in the class website. Example certificates can be seen from below
  • http://www.javapassion.com/j2ee/J2EEProgrammingGraduates.html
    
• At the end of the course, I will ask you to send your personal information, for example, as following:
  
  • The deadline for submitting all homework tasks is <due date>.  If you submitted all homework tasks, please send an email to the homework alias (<homework alias of a course>) with the following information.  The subject of the email should be <specific subject for a course and session>.
    
    • <First-name Last-name>, <Nationality or Country of Origin>, <One paragraph you want to say about this course (optional)>
    • Sang Shin, Korea, This is a great course or whatever you want to say...

• If your email with homework attachment is not bounced back, please assume I received it.  The scheme has been working for me for several years without a major problem.

• Homework iw designed such that you know you have done your work or not.   In other words, you should not submit homework unless the work is done.  If there is a vagueness in the homework description, please post it to the class alias so that it can be discussed and corrected by the instructors.
  
• Unless it is an extremely unusual case, you will not get an individual response from the instructors indicating the quality of your individual homework.  This is more or less due to time constraint of the instructors.  Given that there are thousands of students taking the class, and instructors are teaching this class as their spare time activity, there is simply no way each homework can be reviewed/commented/corresponded by instructors.
  

• The due date of all homework tasks is 2 weeks after the last class of the current session so you have plenty of time to submit your homework.

• Yes.

• Yes, but you will not get a certificate.

How we communicate in this course

• The class email aliases are set up for attendees to post questions, share knowledge, and exchange ideas among themselves during the course period.  Attendees are strongly encouraged to post technical questions, interesting articles, tools, sample programs or anything that is relevant to the class.

• When you are posting a question, please make sure you've done your share of work.  Make sure you read the relevant documentation, presentation slides, FAQ, and other posts before you post your question.
• Also please capture as much relevant  information as possible such as following 
  • trace of the exception
  • screen output message of the failure
  • environment variable settings
  • OS platform you use
    
• Even though the folks who usually answer questions (including myself and Sean) are trying to address them as speedy and as best as they can, please understand that these folks are using their spare time and resource to do these as voluntary activities.  Please also note that answering questions like "I did this and somehow it doesn't work" kind of questions are never easy to answer.  Consequently not all questions can be nor would be answered in timely manner.
• Please ask questions that are relevant to the topics of the week if possible so that we can have more focused discussions.
  
• If you find any answers to the questions, please feel free to post to the alias so that other people can benefit.
• I know sometimes you want to send technical questions directly to me (Sang Shin)  but doing so is strongly discouraged due to the following reasons:
  • In most cases, you will get faster responses by posting them to the class alias.  After all, that is what the community is all about. I expect members to help each other on technical questions.
    
  • I personally cannot keep track of who sent what questions due to the large number of emails I have to deal with. (I am sure many of you are in the same boat.) Your questions posted on the class alias will remain there so that they can be answered at a later time by someone.
    
  • In general, I am always and extremely stretched out in terms of time. 
    

• Please do not post a simple "Thank you" note or "Hello" message to the class alias.  This class alias is subscribed by several thousand people so please be aware that these messages are considered as noises by many people.
• Given that we are all living in "instant messaging" age, it is not unreasonable to see folks posting their messages using just lower case letters like following and I know it is perfectly acceptable in instant messaging.
  • "i write this with only lower case letter i." (Not recommended)
• But for posting messages to an email alias where more than several thousands of people are subscribing, I would recommend everyone to follow a couple of guidelines if possible.
  • Start a statement with a capital letter like  following.
    •  "I write this with a capital letter I." (Recommended)
  • Please do not use short-hand.
    • "u are my friend." (Not recommended)
    • "You are my friend." (Recommended)
  • It is generally a good practice to remove irrelevant contents when you reply.
    
  • Now having said that, I know large percentage of the folks on this alias are not speaking English as their first language (including myself - I speak Korean at home.)  Please don't feel intimidated in posting in English. Less than perfect English grammar is perfectly acceptable.

• No, you don't have to read all the emails in order to proceed with this course.  Required material is going to be accessible from the class website. 
  

• Yes, you can.  But I would personally ask you to stay on the alias and change the delivery option to "no email" since the class alias is how I keep track of how many people have registered.
  

• A large number of posts on a class alias indicates that we are building a very successful community. So it is not a bad thing.  Of course, the quality of the posts should be such that people want to read them.
  
• It is very typical there is a very large number of posts in the beginning of the a new course simply because there are lots of  newbie questions.  Things will settle down to reasonable levels as we, as a group, begin to learn the best way to conduct the class.

Software and IDE

• Windows, Solaris X86, Solaris Sparc, Linux, Mac OS, or whatever platform that supports Java
  

• In theory, you could use other IDEs than NetBeans. Practically, it would be much easier for you to use NetBeans since most of the hands-on labs are created with NetBeans in mind.  It would require minimum effort (less than 5 minutes) to learn NetBeans since you can get by just using minimal features of NetBeans in most cases. (Of course, you are welcome  to and in fact encouraged to utilize all the wonderful features of it.)
  
• The selection of NetBeans as an IDE of choice for this course is mainly due to its "best out of the box" experience (meaning you don't have to search for plug-ins yourself) it provides.