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471 attributed reviews in the last 3 years
Refreshingly small course sizes
Outstandingly good courseware
Whizzy online classrooms
Wise Owl trainers only (no freelancers)
Almost no cancellations
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Review 30+ years of Wise Owl
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We also send out useful tips in a monthly email newsletter ...
Not sure if we deserve all the reviews you can see on this site? Here are some of the things we do (very) differently to earn them.
How can any training company guarantee the quality of their courses? Here's how:
Our course manuals and exercises are by some way the best in the computer training industry. Fortunately you don't have to take our word for this - you can see for yourself:
Our values are simple - we treat people as we would like to be treated ourselves. So:
You can see more on our corporate values here.
We've put a lot of thought into making our online courses as useful and interactive as possbile:
Choose a specific course, or stay on this page to see all of our Programming training.
Course:
Can't see the dates/course type that you want? Create your own onsite course (and tailor the content too!).
Courses marked with an (*) are new courses (for these courses our usual no cancel guarantee doesn't apply).
If you can't see the course you want listed above, don't despair! If you can muster 3 or 4 people together, it may well be worth organising an onsite course at your office (we'll provide and set up the computers), or else an online course tailored to your needs.
Here are some comments we've received about our Programming + training. You can see all of our 471 reviews here. We would like to sincerely thank the clients whose names are shown below for kindly agreeing to let us share their feedback.
"The tutor was really good at making sure the people with more experience didn't get bored whilst going at a pace slow enough for the beginners. The course material is clear and structured."
Sam Wareham
Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS FT
"Our trainer was brilliant, explained everything in great detail and made me feel comfortable asking questions, no matter how silly they might be! Overall it's a brilliant course and I would recommend it to anyone wanting to get to grips with SQL basics. Both of my colleagues had attended this course previously and it came highly recommended by them."
Dean Steffen
Linney Group Ltd
"The trainer was great, answered a number of specific questions and expanded to explain why things worked the way they do, which really helped with my own understanding. The training was well paced with plenty of opportunities to have a go and ask questions."
Ruth Pearson
Maggie's
"This was probably one of the most engaging and satisfying courses that I have been on. I was originally a bit nervous that I might not be able to keep up with the level of expected prerequisites. However, the course was pitched at the correct level for me, I gained a lot from it and we had an excellent trainer. I would be happy, if I had the opportunity, to attend another course by Wise Owl e.g. a Python or Power BI course."
PJ Bansel
Dale Underwriting Partners
"I was thoroughly impressed with the course overall. The pre check meeting was a great first impression to the course. Our instructor, was not only an amazing teacher but kept us all entertained and engaged over the 2 days. The course content and pace was perfect for someone like me with no experience of SQL and for those with a bit of experience. I would highly recommend. "
Eliza Edwards
Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG)
"Great introduction - I knew pretty much nothing about SQL or reading databases prior to the course and felt I had learnt a lot. The course is quite intense and my brain was nearly saturated by the end. The delivery of content in steps and blocks was a great structure. Our colleagues have already had training with Wise Owl and recommended you to us again. Was great!"
Clemence Hope
The Modern Milkman
We like programming! To help you choose which language to learn, we've included a quick guide below. To avoid any bias, the languages are listed in alphabetical order.
Language | When and why you would use it |
---|---|
C# | Visual C# allows you to build websites and forms-based systems in .NET. |
Office Scripts | The new way to automate Excel (and presumably in the future other Microsoft applications) using a language based upon TypeScript. |
Python | An increasingly popular language used to manipulate data, scrape websites, analyse statistics and much more besides. |
SQL | SQL allows you to extract information from SQL Server databases, and then manipulate it. |
VBA | Visual Basic for Applications is the language included in Microsoft Office, and allows you to automate Excel, Access and other programs. |
Here are the main courses that we teach in each language:
Language | Main courses |
---|---|
C# | |
Office Scripts | Introduction to Office Scripts (2 days) |
Python | |
SQL | |
VBA |
If you're not a specialist programmer, you'll probably want to avoid learning Python or C#, but becoming proficient in Office Scripts, SQL or VBA may well make you able to do day-to-day tasks more quickly, without needing to resort to getting help from your (busy) IT department all the time.
Whichever language you choose, you'll have to master the same core concepts:
Concept | Explanation |
---|---|
Variables | Variables are places in which you can store single items of data, such as integers, dates and bits of text. |
Conditions | At the heart of programming is the ability to test a condition, to see which execution path to follow. |
Loops | Also at the heart of programming is the ability to repeat a series of steps a number of times, perhaps while a particular condition is true. |
Programming has come on over the years, but the essential principles remain the same (in virtually every language you create variables, test conditions and iterate over loops). To show the evolution of programming over the decades, here are the languages learnt by the oldest of the Wise Owls:
Decade | Main language learnt | Notes |
---|---|---|
1980s | Fortran | In early Fortran you had to colour in shapes on punch cards with a 2B pencil! How times have changed ... |
1990s | VBA | The 1990s saw Microsoft roll out Visual Basic for Applications across all of the MIcrosoft Office product range; it's still going strong today. |
2000s | SQL | T-SQL is the dialect of SQL used for extracting data from SQL Server. |
2010s | C# | C, C++, Java and JavaScript are all variants of C#. |
2020s | Python | The up-and-coming language, Python allows you to write more concise code and supports lots of additional libraries. |
2030s? | ? | What will be the language we will be writing in the AI era? |
We don't train in Fortran (thank goodness), but we do still train in the languages from the other decades.
Click on any heading below to learn more.
Contact method | Details |
---|---|
Phone | Call us on (0161) 883 3606 and (within normal UK office hours) a friendly and helpful human will answer the phone! |
Send an email to our inbox and we'll aim to answer it within a couple of working hours. | |
Web | Fill in an enquiry form letting us know what you want to achieve, and we'll do our best to help! |
Skills you want to test |
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Excel VBA |
SQL (for SQL Server) |
Python |
Each tests consists of 20 questions. The tests are free and anonymous, and at the end you'll see a full analysis of your results (as well as a comparison of how well you did relative to everyone else who has previously taken the test).
We've got the following videos on our site to help you to learn Programming:
Category | Videos |
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12 |
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18 |
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14 |
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25 |
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15 |
Blog topic |
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Python |
SQL |
Visual C# |
VBA macros |
Office Scripts |
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