I have just started the course, but it is way over my head. This should clearly be marked as intermediate, advanced or marked as for people already in IT industry.

You need a little more experience in coding that just the first course, or try not to leave everything by the end of the week(as I did) to find what you need for the assignments. Great course !

To say this course is for beginners is a misnomer.

I think if one has some familiarity with another programming language then yes - this could be a beginner course. I came into this course with zero formal programming knowledge and was completely overwhelmed by the pace and material. This course does not give the students any/enough "small wins" to build muscle memory and gain confidence.

I was drawn in by assumed time for completion. 4-8 hours/week sounded pretty good for the schedule of a working adult, however the 10-minute "assignments" consistently took me 6+ hours (most of the time spent calling/screen-sharing with my developer friend for help). Again, I think if one already has some programming knowledge (and therefore not *really* a 'beginner') then yes, this would probably take them that amount of time.

I folded almost at the end of week 2. To echo another review here, it seems the instructors forgot what it is like to be a beginner. The instructors assume too much about what their students know. Really kicking myself for spending the money trying to limp through this course.

If you are like me and starting without any experience, there are plenty of alternative free material actually geared towards 'beginners' that will give you the context and practice needed to actually comprehend the course material.

The assignment questions were very repetitive. A lot of times the assignment questions weren't clear. As opposed to spending a lot of time learning and debugging my code, it felt like I was doing rote work. The worst part about the course experience was the BlueJay IDE. It requires you to manually compile your code, then create a new instance of your class, then run the test method, after EVERY change.

There are other OOP courses out there that are easier to follow & execute on assignments. The java editor used in this class is clunky and ridiculous and the assignment instructions seem out of date and disorganized - this class was infuriating. It takes simple assignments and obfuscates instructions.

Really poor course structure and material explanations. Canceling subscription.

It was very instructive course. I recomend every people who want to take this course. I thank all the instructors who gave this lesson.

I'm so glad I've found this amazing course! Thank you!

Second week was a bit difficult to work with.

This is an Awesome Course . The best thing About this Course is that It has weekly quizzes and Assignments as well as Practice Quizzes for particular Topics which helps in learning it more easily .

Really practical course content with great tutorials. The programming assignments are fun and challenging and deal with real world data and problems which makes the course all the more useful!

Thanks a lot for improving my skills! This course is really great to succed in Java as a beginner:) A lot of interesting practical tasks!

Понравился курс, все понятно и подробно объясняется. Очень понравились практические задания!

A good experience! The programming exercise is interesting!

Very difficult beginner course but possible with all the discussion forums and such but will require hours and hours of practice and time. Overall good course but time consuming and difficult for a beginner who is just starting out with programming. Not so bad for people with a few months or years of experience though which is why I'm giving 4/5 stars but would have given 2/5 stars from a beginner's perspective.

Good practical use cases of Java have been given. The challenging quotient on some of the questions can be increased. For instance, the use of arrays to process CSV files, etc. But it was refreshing to do a Java course that didn't focus on the usual syntax and semantics but looked at real life examples.

Do not recommend this course and this specialization for beginners. The first part of the specialization was even good, bit this one went considerably worse. Maybe worthy to make only if you have an experienced developer on your side to help you. Most likely, you're going to be really frustrated. Had high expectations on this courses, sadly was disappointed. Poor and unclear explanations, too complicated and multiple assignments, everything moves too fast for a beginner. Plus using a BlueJ environment which nobody in a real world uses.

Very disappointing for me. I chose the course to learn the fundamentals of Java, but it is really everything but motivating. The lessons are short and kept very easy and informative, but for the assignments you have to do things that were never mentioned anywhere, so you spend hours of research online on how to do the assignments. That's not why I wanted to visit a course, hours of frustrating online research I can also have while learning it on my own

I had been out of programming for many years, and decided to try this Java Programming: Solving Problems with Software course by Duke University on Coursera.org. I really liked the course! It is a great review for me of Java programming basics, without the technical jargon that goes along with object oriented programming. The really nice part is that I can see object oriented principles in action! I enjoyed the way Duke University uses the 7 step process for solving problems consistently through the course. They break problems down into small, manageable pieces, that build up to solving a larger problem. Some concepts include: Basic Java syntax, definitions of class, instance variables and methods (functions); variables, For each loops, While loops, Strings, Java types and Java mathematical operators. The assignments were interesting, and include calculating the perimeter of a shape, finding genes in a strand of DNA, working with CSV formatted files to analyze weather data and to find exports from different countries, and finishing with a MiniProject to find interesting trends in American Baby Names from a CSV formatted data files. The Honors assignment was also fun: processing multiple images to convert them to gray scale, or invert the images, and save them with a new filename. Another really nice aspect of this course is that you use a Duke University (on Coursera) version of BlueJ, an interactive design environment for creating Java programs - where everything is a class! The instructors at Duke have created their own java library, with classes to help new learners easily open and close files in the BlueJ environment, and work with Pixels in an image. Duke also has good documentation for each class, which to me, is better than the documentation on the java oracle website. While the Java documentation on the oracle website is still very difficult to read, I have gotten used to looking some documented class, like Strings, and clicking on the "methods" tab to look at what you can do with them. However, you really do not need to refer to the Java Oracle documentation to complete the assignments - all you need is the documentation from Duke University! I really liked this class!

The course content was excellent. I highly recommend taking this class for anyone who wants to get a quick start in java or refresh it after a long time off. The exercises are wonderful at introducing basic problem solving skills by way of highly relevant real world examples.

If you are familiar with another programming language, especially a less demanding one like Python, this course will help you get used to the more rigorous requirements of Java syntax.

Now, why the two stars? Week 4 is fraught with errors. If you code the final project EXACTLY as asked in the assignment, using the EXACT definitions of all methods, the highest score you can get on the quiz is a 42. In other words, you must code and provide incorrect answers to pass the test. These mistakes have been pointed out repeatedly to moderators in the user forums for several years and no changes have been made to address the errors in the curriculum. Because this is a paid service, I find that highly unacceptable.

First two courses are awesome and really built the sense how to tackle real world problems like software engineer.I have learnt a lot from these two courses and eager to learn something new in upcoming course. I only knew very little about C++ and afraid from coding because i forgot syntax and couldn't built and fit logic correctly but after completing these two courses very good percentage in this specialization i feel comfortable towards any language. This specialization is gateway for other languages for me. It helps me to throw my hesitation in coding.

All teachers are good in delivering concept.Also the assignments and mini projects are really challenging , hence they polish concepts that teacher delivers in lectures.

Further more i really likes the shirts of Dr.Robert. I appreciate coursera and Duke MOOCS teams for organizing this very novice friendly to expert course on Java.

I hope and waiting for next serialization which leads from where this one left.

This is a very well put together course, efficient lecture videos and some brilliant quiz exercises. But the expected times are way off. Some of the assignments which say that expected time is 10 mins might take hours even for an experienced coder, let alone a novice in this field. Moreover, I posted 4-5 threads on discussion forum and I never received even a single reply. If i have paid for this course I would expect to get my doubts cleared but the mentors and even the peers don't respond to discussion forum. One of the codes in a lecture video is actually incorrect and will not produce the desired output in one special case. I pointed that out in discussion forum but no one responded. So I did learn many things from this course but I never got my doubts cleared, so I would not recommend this course to a beginner.

I already had some programming experience - a semester of C (I can use pointers!) and some web development and I found this course very, very challenging and time consuming but ultimately very rewarding. The problem areas covered are really interesting and it is obvious that a lot of thought and effort has gone into making this course.

I would not recommend this course or specialization to a complete beginner unless they have a lot of spare time and are prepared to go slow and deal with a lot of frustration. There seems to be some excellent courses for complete beginners out there that would be a better place to start one's coding adventure.

This is a great first course to take at Coursera - you'll find the the content is high quality, the assignments progressively challenge you, and sets the tone that you're going to get a lot out of the courses but it's something you'll have to work for.

I thoroughly enjoyed the process of moving through the course and would recommend it to others, with the caveat that you're not going to just breeze through without putting in some time to focus on the assignments.

I definitely feel that I came away having advanced my skills and having accomplished something! That's the highest accolade you could give to any training.

Thanks!

Beutifully done! Well organized. The assignments were challenging, but were well documented, so it was easy to follow along and complete them.

The two projects at the end of the course were terrific as well. I really enjoyed working on them and then showing them to friends and family.

The videos were clear, coherent and concise. I could watch them on the go and sometimes all at once. I loved that flexibility. The topics were also well chosen. Basic programming. But still quite challenging.

Excellent course! I highly recommend it. I look forward to completing the rest of the specialization as well.