How often do you get training? Every six months? Once a year? Never? The fact is, most developers never receive any formal training after they move into the real world. Those who do probably don't take advantage of all the training that's available to them.

Many people require training even after moving up the rungs of the corporate ladder. Construction, for example, requires employees to be trained in new technologies and safety. Could you imagine a world where engineers didn't receive training after moving into the corporate world? Buildings would be falling apart. Plastics and new construction materials would never be used. The "way it's always been" would be the "way it's always going to be." A career in programming isn't any different.

Training is a choice we make to better ourselves. If we choose not to utilize it we become dinosaurs in our fields. Technology stagnation is a plague that infects us all well before we're willing to retire. We've all worked with someone at one time or another who still thinks FORTRAN and COBOL are the only "real" way a project should be done. These people found a niche and worked in it for many years, never able to find their way out. Feeling that training in new technologies was for the new and uninitiated, they decided to continue further down the road of technology stagnation until one day they found themselves without a job.

All that can change though. Tech training is still a big industry and there are some wonderful programs out there. But which type of training program is right for you? Off-site training? On-site? Webcasts? Seminars? Certifications? All these types of training are wonderful, but which one is the best for your needs? Which one will provide you with the knowledge and direction to better yourself?

Off-Site Training
Off-site training normally involves a classroom-type atmosphere with 20-30 people and 1-2 instructors. This is normally what people think of when they think of training. Personally, I feel this offers the best type of learning environment. Off-site training allows you to vacate the office for a couple of days and forget about any looming projects, and puts you in front of a computer with people who live and breathe the technology that they teach. This also allows you to take full advantage of the instructor's knowledge base. Instructors make a living teaching, not lecturing, so ask questions and make sure you get complete answers. Compared to on-site training, which I'll discuss later, these classes are geared toward a general knowledge of the subject, so you'll be able to choose where best to apply your education.

On-Site Training
On-site training is a great way to learn about a particular technology for a specific project. When you don't have time to become a technology guru, on-site training works wonders. Normally, someone with specific technical knowledge is brought in to help you work through your problems and hopefully inform you of the benefits of that technology.

I realize that many people would say that the technology shouldn't be chosen if the developers are not experienced in it or it's completely foreign to them; however, in the real world, management often chooses a technology based on more than just its technical merits. That's where on-site training can help. The only problem with on-site training is that after it's over, you may not use your training on another project because it was very specific to your needs at the time.

Webcasts
Webcasts, cyberlearning, virtual classrooms, whatever you may call them, are a wonderful way to receive an executive-level overview of a technology. Most Webcasts are more of a promotional campaign and public relations event than they are a training session. In my experience, even Webcasts that contain interactive chats and question-and- answer sessions fall flat. They always seem to lack any real connection with the presenter and you're never able to get valid answers to your questions. A one-line question on a computer screen can be ignored too easily. Since there's really no way to develop any connection with the trainer, the entire presentation can come off cold and impersonal. That's no way to learn.

Seminars
Seminars are the crème de la crème of technology training. You can sit in on a lot of different lectures on various technologies ranging from development ideologies to the next big thing in storage media. Not only that, but you're able to rub elbows with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people in your field, and see vendors trying to one-up each other (in what sometimes seems like a Battle Royal). Seminars are a wonderful tool to get people out of the office for a while and working on their interpersonal skills. It's always a good idea to meet other people in the industry.

Certifications
As wonderful as all the other types of training are, none of them can give you a little framed piece of paper to hang on your wall. Certifications can. Many people think certifications are meaningless, but those who do consider them important are recruiters and human resource personnel. Certifications are the only real way to put yourself above the others in the résumé pile. Also certifications are a quick and easy way to explain to possible employers what exactly is in your skillset.

Once upon a time, when I was first honing my skills in Web development, I was a one-man development team for a medium-sized business. When the time came for me to start looking elsewhere for employment, I had no clue how proficient I was in Web development. So I fired up my browser and starting looking for certification tests I could take, hoping they would at least tell me where I stood.

Brainbench (www.brainbench.com) came to the rescue. They allowed me to test myself, quickly and easily, in many different technologies and receive immediate feedback in areas in which I may be lacking. Brainbench might not be the best resource for certifications, but it was a simple and cost-effective way for me to test my knowledge.

What About PowerBuilder?
According to Chetney Hieber, manager of technical development at Information Services International, PowerBuilder development is still a big industry that focuses on all types of developers, new and old. "We receive both new hires out of college and existing developers (we've had COBOL, C++, and Java developers). Training is very important [to all developers] - reading a book or learning it from a co-worker may cause a developer to miss the big picture of how the topics are interrelated. [Developers] should attend training as often as possible to acquire new skills or pick up advanced training in existing skills."

Also, according to Hieber, PowerBuilder is still strong across all market segments. "PowerBuilder is strong in all types of companies, including the financial sector, service sector, utilities, and manufacturing. Currently, there's a strong demand for PowerBuilder training, particularly on the topic of migrating from PB 5 or 6 to PB 8."

Go Out and Get It
If you never received training, now might be a good time. With the job market picking up again and training becoming more of a priority, many places are beefing up their offerings to try to lure people in. If you've received training before, you know how useful it can be and how beneficial it is to your continued development.

As professionals, it's our duty to continue to increase our knowledge in order to make the best use of time, money, and materials. Talk to your supervisors, I'm sure they place training at a high priority; if they don't, they do not realize the benefits of keeping their employees at the forefront of technology. All in all, if you don't take advantage of training, the only person you will be hurting is yourself. Take some time to better yourself, your employer, and your industry.