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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Java Programming: Solving Problems with Software by Duke University

4.6
stars
7,845 ratings

About the Course

Learn to code in Java and improve your programming and problem-solving skills. You will learn to design algorithms as well as develop and debug programs. Using custom open-source classes, you will write programs that access and transform images, websites, and other types of data. At the end of the course you will build a program that determines the popularity of different baby names in the US over time by analyzing comma separated value (CSV) files. After completing this course you will be able to: 1. Edit, compile, and run a Java program; 2. Use conditionals and loops in a Java program; 3. Use Java API documentation in writing programs. 4. Debug a Java program using the scientific method; 5. Write a Java method to solve a specific problem; 6. Develop a set of test cases as part of developing a program; 7. Create a class with multiple methods that work together to solve a problem; and 8. Use divide-and-conquer design techniques for a program that uses multiple methods....

Top reviews

AS

Dec 10, 2020

Excellent explanations and amount of course work for practice, the tests made good use of the examples and work given, I am satisfied with what I learned in this course and see it's real world usage.

FA

Oct 7, 2017

Excellent explanations and amount of course work for practice, the tests made good use of the examples and work given, I am satisfied with what I learned in this course and see it's real world usage.

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1501 - 1525 of 1,613 Reviews for Java Programming: Solving Problems with Software

By lizhinuo

Dec 23, 2021

you need to learn oop before starting this course

By Yvon G

Apr 17, 2020

I think more guides in Assignments would be ok.

By 19IT135 M M S

Jul 26, 2020

I like theroy portino but not practical.

By Lungu C

Jan 19, 2017

A bit complicated for a beginner.

By vedansh s

Mar 16, 2017

Its a good course for beginners

By Alexey B

Jun 28, 2018

Slow pace and long dialogues.

By Chiara T

Jun 22, 2020

Absolutely not for beginners

By Yamin A

Mar 30, 2021

bluej is not good enough,

By Shivam G

Dec 28, 2020

its good with good quizes

By Chas B

May 18, 2017

Week 2 needs to be fixed.

By sireesha d

Apr 24, 2023

Tq forn this certificate

By Kapil R

Jun 26, 2020

The course was good .

By Krishnangi B

May 24, 2021

It is a good course.

By Parvinder S

Feb 4, 2021

nice expericence

By Rajat C

Jun 15, 2021

very good

By Shrinath S

Apr 5, 2021

good one

By DELA C J K (

Jan 12, 2020

Too hard

By Kunle O

Jan 25, 2022

This course made me want to stop coding. I've done other courses on Coursera and have learned so much, but in this specialization, I find myself dreading every single week of "learning" and assignments. Its not Java itself that's making it bad, its the way Duke teaches:

First, the course says that no previous Java knowledge is necessary, though from Week 1, that is clearly not the case. They literally didn't teach me the proper syntax to get started. I have to buy "Mastering Java" from Amazon to get base level knowledge. Second, about 25% of Duke's weekly assignments is stuff they haven't gone over. Its fine to struggle, that's a part of learning, but the jump from what's been covered in the lesson to what the final task of the weekly assignment goes over is frustrating to say the least. Programming languages give no mercy for syntax errors, so when you haven't learned the syntax for something you've assigned, its gets painful very quickly and there's no way out because the original assignment/request was so random to begin with that you're not sure what the final output should be, therefore you can't figure it out on your own. Lastly, their estimated time it takes to complete an assignment is WAY off. I've done plenty of courses on Coursera and they usually overestimate how long assignments take. Duke drastically underestimates it. Every week's assignment supposedly takes 10 minutes. I know what I'm doing and every assignment takes at least 1-1.5 hrs because of all the random stuff they want me to do.

I hoped Duke's nonsense stopped after the Javascript course (yes, they assigned Javascript in their Java specialization. Should've been the first red flag). For my sanity's sake, I'm withdrawing from this course and will avoid any course led by Duke University.

By Bruno Z

Apr 25, 2020

So far I am fairly disappointed with this course, it spends too much time on such simple concepts and skips over the really important ones. I was hoping for more of a 'university' level quality class, and instead I find myself listing to the instructors talk about subjects that are hardly related to what the quiz and lab work content will be, and when the time comes to work on the lab and quiz portions of the class, I find myself not knowing what they are asking and having to do my own research to try to figure out the answers as opposed to feeling that I at least was 'taught' the material in preparation for the quiz or lab.

By Lee H

Mar 13, 2018

Video instructors are knowledgeable, and I like the challenge of the assignments. But I recently got stuck on an assignment and went to the discussion forum for help. No response from any of the moderators or peers. Plus the codesnippet tool to post code to the forum is absolute crap. Will not format any code even if it is written in line by line. I have been fruitless trying to search for help outside of this course so far as well.

Lots of wasted time.

I really want to finish the class, but I doubt I will ever waste my money on these Duke\Java classes again. I will go elsewhere.

By Thao L Q P

May 23, 2020

I completed the course. However, without my husband's help (who is a senior software engineer), I'm sure that I could have not. This course is surely not for a beginner. Though I had taken a C++ course in a community college before, I still found this course is so hard. Each lesson seems short, simple and easy to understand, but the assignments (Reading and quizzes) are crazy with very little reference document and clear instruction. Most of the time, I spent around 5 hours for each such assignment, not 10 minutes as it is allocated.

By ADAM B

Mar 10, 2020

The lecturers go in to loads of depth, which is great. Instead of having smaller assignments though, I think there were 2 quizzes so far for me and then an assignment testing every single thing so far. When you're learning, you need to be able to chew away at it gradually and not have everything lumped on you in one go. It definitely is not for beginners. The concepts alone are at beginner level, but you will need prior coding experience to be able to follow it properly.

By David W

Oct 23, 2020

I would not class this as a beginner course. The content is too advanced if you are new to coding. I wish I had read the reviews before enrolling. This is course 2 in one specialism and course 1 in another within Coursera which does not seem right. I think a course 2 is the right level but the speed needs to be adjusted. I also think some of the exercise timings are off as they were indicating 15 minutes where the actual work takes a lot longer.

By FARDIN A A

May 1, 2020

The course is good to learn how to solve problems with programming. The course instructors are also very good and understandable. But to learn java specifically, I wouldn't suggest this course to anyone because this course is totally based on the user defined functions that are provided by Duke University. And can't be used in other IDEs than BlueJ. So, it's more like learning how to use their functions than learning actual Java library.

By Jon C

Oct 15, 2021

I wished we had spent more time learning about more basic walk through the project such as attributes, methods and constructors themselves and the reason why we used them. Also clarifying more the object oriented method but instead I feel like the curse assumed we already knew what they were doing and focused more on solving the problem teaching easier stuffed like and, or, while and for.