Thank you, Alexey Volosevich, very much for all your help in creating this blog post.

In November, 2016, the Training Center within Coherent’s Minsk, Belarus Development Operation marked its sixth anniversary. Aimed at sharpening our employees’ skills and introducing them to new technologies, the Training Center has grown from seven classes and 40 participants in 2010 to 46 courses offered in 2016 (27 new ones are planned for 2017) and over 800 participants – which exceeds our overall number of employees! That means many people attended several courses.

Training manager Alexey Volosevich and I are proud of the classes we offer and the high number of Coherent employees who choose to improve their skills through our in-house training. We offer two types of training. Applied training is highly individualized training in which employees are assigned a personal coach from among our experienced team. Together the student and coach design a personal study program which includes tasks that correspond to a specific internal company project. The coach supervises and judges the student’s work over several months. When the coach feels the student is ready, s/he moves on to apply the new skills s/he has learned on other projects.

Group classes are classroom-style courses for up to 15 participants. These include lectures, hands-on tasks and testing. These often explore the theory behind technologies or business practices, and then apply that learning to real world software development.

Among the courses that were added in 2016 are:

  • NET and Entity Framework
  • Advanced HTML and CSS
  • NET Core
  • ECMAScript 2015
  • Intro to Hadoop Ecosystem
  • Introduction to Communication Management
  • Java Core
  • Mobile Testing
  • Spring Framework
  • Windows PowerShell

 

2017: Future Plans

When we started forming the class schedule for 2017 we conducted an employee survey to learn about people’s career and technical interests. We also considered the needs of our clients and emerging technologies and trends. Finally, we organized a series of discussions with department managers and trainers before settling on the 27 new courses. Below are descriptions of a few of them.

Microsoft Azure for .NET Developers

This training presents Microsoft Azure cloud services from the point of view of a .NET developer. It includes specific examples of using them in applications’ code.

Target Audience: Experienced .NET developers.

Java 8

This in-depth training covers Java language extensions. New features in Java up to version 8 are presented, including generics, annotation and elements of functional programming.

Target Audience: Developers who know the basics of Java and want to deepen their knowledge of it and Java packages.

ReactJS

Students get an overview of component-based development, including VirtualDOM and JSX. Training includes exploration of the inner structure of ReactJS, as well as infrastructure related to the world of ReactJS applications including FLUX architecture, Redux, and MobX. Also, training covers testing ReactJS applications as well as the ReactNative mobile platform.

Target Audience: Both beginners and developers somewhat familiar with ReactJS who want to improve their skills and knowledge.

Functional Programming Concepts

This course covers higher-order functions, pure functions, immutability, pattern matching, monads. The concepts are illustrated with examples in F#, JavaScript, C#.

Target Audience: Developers interested in learning the basic principles of functional programming and how to use them in real projects.

Comparison of SQL and NoSQL Databases

After introducing students to NoSQL there will be a comparative analysis of SQL and NoSQL systems in relation to: storage mechanism; retrieving and updating data; design characteristics; development; support; management; optimization, and extension. Students learn about CAP-theorem and problem-solve on choosing the most suitable technologies in cases of defined requirements to the future system.

Target Audience: IT specialists that want to get an overview of principles and application areas for NoSQL databases.

 

Strong employee interest in training and increasing the curriculum have meant adding staff to the Training Center. With eight new instructors we are up to 35 in our area. All of our trainers have shown an eagerness to pass on their knowledge and experience to new students. Thanks to all of them for their hard work and dedication!