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493 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
We have genuine integrity
We invoice after training
Review 30+ years of Wise Owl
View our top 100 clients
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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 493 reviews here. We would like to sincerely thank the clients whose names are shown below for kindly agreeing to let us share their feedback.
"Our trainer was great!"
Rory Ferguson
Dale Underwriting Partners
"I thought the course was superb. The content delivery and the accessibility to all was really impressive, having the exercises to work through during the course helped consolidate the knowledge. The content was really easy to follow and if we were ever stuck, were given the confidence to feel like we could ask for help. I have been on multiple different training courses with different providers and I can honestly say the course was delivered by the best trainer I have ever had. The passion he has for teaching and helping others learn was clearly on show and was so refreshing and great to see. Throughout both days he made you feel so welcome and that no question was a stupid question, he was always there to help and guide you through any problems we had and overall he was just amazing, I couldn't have asked for any more and he went above and beyond my expectations for the course and what I would gain from it. "
Cameron Daulby
Ifor Williams Trailers Ltd
"The trainer was fantastic, really helpful and made the session highly enjoyable."
Mitchell Brain
Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG)
"Brilliant from start to end. I am missing it already! Oddly, I think the online format works a bit better than in class, apart from the fact we couldn't all go for a beer at the end of it. I liked how our trainer could monitor all of our work at once and offer guidance without needing to name anyone. The whole thing was thoroughly enjoyable and ran smoothly and I would recommend you as a company with pleasure."
Marketa Koskova
Legal Aid Agency
"Perfect! The pace was fast, content delivered well and I got everything from the course I was hoping for. As we already have software development experience, it meant we could canter through the content and focus on the applicable differences. Well worth having a 'private' course for us three attendees, as this allowed us to prioritise the content in the time available and gave the opportunity to discuss aspects of our current software project in the context of the course with the trainer. We feel we can 'hit the ground running' now."
Stuart Green
ENGIE Services Ltd
"Really great course with a fantastic trainer. I already had existing knowledge of SQL as I use it regularly in my day job, the topics covered in this course aligned with areas I had identified as lacking in my knowledge."
Hannah Keogan
Department for Education
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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