chapman@lll-lcc.UUCP (Carol Chapman) (08/30/89)
A number of people asked me to report back to them with my
impressions of the X Window Systems classes that I took in Boston, so
I thought it best to just post this for the benefit of those who are
considering taking such a class. I would also be interested in
hearing people's impressions of other X classes that they have taken.
I have no affiliation with Integrated Computer Solutions Inc. of Cambridge,
Massachusetts (ICS -- not to be confused with another company called ICS
that is located in Calif.) who put on the classes.
First off, I have been using X11R3, Xt and the Athena widgets for
about 7 months now. However, I found some areas of X (such as color
manipulation) were rather vague in my mind, plus I wondered if I was really
coding things in the most efficient way possible.
I signed up for 2 ICS classes: "Programming the X Window System,
An Intensive Workshop" -- a 3 day class costing $1400, and "Widget
Writing" -- a 2 day class costing $700. The Widget Writing class
started the day after the other class ended, and almost everyone in
the first class was also in the second class. There were about 20
students. Mark Ackerman who assisted in developing the Athena widgets,
was the instructor. David Lewis and Mark Antonelli served as guest
instructors for some of the lectures. The classes were taught at
M.I.T. The Xt toolkit was emphasized, although a fair amount of time
was also devoted to Xlib. Both Athena and HP widgets were used in
examples and assignments.
Overall, I enjoyed both classes and would give anyone considering
taking such classes a thumbs up for these. The lecturers were all
quite knowledgeable in their subject areas, and the class assignments
were quite useful in terms of learning the concepts. My only
criticism is that ICS doesn't seem to know who to target the classes
for. There were some people in the first class with no X experience
at all, others knew some windowing system, but not X, and then there
were people like me who had already been using X but wanted to know
more. As a result, some people were really struggling the first day,
while others were bored. My interest really perked up on the third
(last) day of the "Programming ..." class and for both days of the
Widget Writing class. I had never tried to write a custom widget and
thought that 2 days wasn't enough time to really get into it,
especially since the second day of Widget Writing was a Friday, and
people were getting tired by then, leaving early to catch planes, etc.
For texts, we were given a large number of ICS handouts plus the
"X Window System C Library and Protocol Reference" by Scheifler,
Gettys and Newman, and a binder of the documentation that comes free with
the M.I.T. release of X11R3. I brought along my own copies of Doug
Young's Xt book and the O'Reilly Vol. 2 book and relied on those more
than anything else.
ICS is interested in getting feedback for their classes. My
personal recommendation would be to offer a 4 day beginner's class and
a separate 4 day widget writing class. Day 1 of the widget writing
class should probably be an intensive Xlib and Xt review with the
actual widget writing beginning on day 2.
Let me repeat that I have no affiliation with ICS. Anyone
wishing to contact them for further details can do so at:
Integrated Computer Solutions Inc.
163 Harvard St.
Cambridge, MA 02139
Tel. (617) 547-0510
carol chapman
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