Disillusionment with Usenix tutorial

[Mike Tilson]

As the Usenix tutorial coordinator, I am responding to the unsigned
posting (return address tekadg!davidl) regarding unhappiness with
the Advanced C Programming tutorial at the Portland Usenix meeting.
I apologize for the large number of newsgroups, but I am only responding
to the original posting.  If there is any followup, please restrict it
to net.usenix.

The essence of the complaint was that the tutorial was not sufficiently
advanced to be worth the time and money spent attending, and in general
not very well done.  Also included were some remarks to the effect that
the level of the tutorial was equal to all of the other Usenix activities,
i.e. none of them were very advanced or very good.

I have reviewed the course evaluation forms.  Many attendees felt that
the course was well done.  Nearly all attendees felt that they got
something out of the course.  However, I think we did have a problem
in targeting the course to its audience, since a number of attendees
felt the course was better described as "intermediate" rather than
"advanced".  Unfortunately, while "novice" is fairly well defined,
there is no top end to "advanced".  The course description did state
that 3-6 months of C programming experience were expected, but if you
already had several years, the tutorial was a little low level.
Nevertheless, most attendees got something out of it (at least those
that handed in evaluation forms.)

We will continue to work on refining our descriptions of courses as
well as improving the program.  I would like to say that most of
our tutorials are very well received.  I think they hold up very well
in comparison with any others.  We welcome any comments and suggestions
for improvement, and we *do* look at evaluations and change the
program accordingly.

Michael Tilson
Usenix Tutorial Coordinator
{utzoo,decvax}!hcr!hcradm!mike