Originally Posted by
ledow
You can't learn much about programming from a course. The ones that are run tend to be nothing more than your university course (and usually a lot, lot, less). I don't know of any C course specifically, and even a C++ course is hard to find and usually extremely expensive and probably unsuitable because they'll be aimed at business programmers wanting to get into a new language, not learn from scratch. The UK is also not that big on tech conferences unless they are backed by big business, when they basically become adverts.
As far as I'm aware, there are very few IT professional bodies in the UK at all - and I work in IT. There are "qualifications" but they tend not to focus on programming at all (because that's not something you can really evaluate quickly or easily) but core skills and particular products. Hell, we don't even have IT unions, let alone anything else. There is no central IT body and certainly not one that advertises any conference or course that I've ever been even vaguely interested in (and my employer would quite happily send me along at whatever cost if I asked).
And, as I say, you won't benefit much from any programming conference unless you're already programming - I've seen ones with titles such as "Secure Business Programming" but they focus exclusively on the big-business languages, software and techniques and assume you're already an accomplished programmer. They don't teach you how to program, they merely teach you what to look out for in that very narrow aspect of programming in a general way. Everything else is business and/or basic "IT Skills" related (read: Can you click a mouse?).
And no conference-style environment will help your programming. It really won't. It's like sending a lumberjack on a business course - they might learn something about Health and Safety or some regulation, but they won't become better lumberjacks because of it. Programming is not something that you can just nod along to and gain knowledge subconsciously. You either do it or you don't and the skill is in the doing, not the knowing. Every single piece of code you ever write will be entirely different to every single piece of code everyone else would write, unless you copy them literally.
You can look, but what you'll find are business courses with zero programming content, high-level theoretical courses with zero actual programming content, or the equivalent of your university course from either other universities or someone with an inferior knowledge of programming to them. Trust me, you're much better off just sitting down for a hour or two and programming something each night.