Instructor Insights

Our instructors have real-world experience in the technologies that they teach. Here they share their insights and discoveries on working with each of these technologies.

Java Insights

• Use StringBuilder rather than StringBuffer in your Java5+ implementations when you are writing single-threaded applications.
• Use the GregorianCalendar class instead of the Date class to represent dates in Java

Oracle Insights

• Use IS NULL and IS NOT NULL to check for NULL values, as the = and < > comparison operators will always return false when comparing against NULL.
• Bind Variables in prepared statements can improve performance many times over.

Perl Insights

• Use Perl to convert UNIX text files to Windows text files.
• Use parentheses to indicate precedence, rather than memorizing the precedence rules.
• Lists are NOT the same as arrays.

XML Insights

• Even though the Namespace Name is typically a URI, it does not have to resolve to any real resource.
• Use W3C XML Schema to validate an element that contains both simple and complex content.

Meet some of our instructors and read about their extensive technical backgrounds.