I really did not enjoy using CodePen and Duke's portal to complete the assignments. They are unrealistic to use in the real world.

Secondly, HMTL and CSS felt very straightforward. However, Javascript felt like an entirely new world. I think lessons and extra time should be taken to explain the semantics A LOT more slowly and methodically than what was done. I found myself severely confused for the large part of this class in the last 1/3 of the course.

An excellent course that is so easy to follow and comprehend. It has everything that a beginner needs. Wonderful teachers and very good content. I really enjoyed this course. Thank you so much!

GREAT EXPERIENCE,GREAT STARTY TOWARDS FUN WITH PROGRAMMING AND PLAYING WITH JAVASCRIPT TO MODIFY IMAGES

This says it is a beginners course that you don't need any prior knowledge. That is not true. I'm a beginner with no prior knowledge and I found this course extremely difficult to follow. The videos did not "dumb" it down enough for me, the "Try It's" were very hard and I found I couldn't figure out how to write the code they were telling to do in these "Try it's" They have resources and keep referring you back to the video, which I did not find helpful. I had to seek external help from other programs and people(not in the forums, because they were useless and many people had the same questions I did and there didn't seem to be any good, working, useful answers). This was a very frustrating course. I would like to finish the other 4 parts of the specialization but I will have to wait and come back to them after I have take other course to get a better understand of how to write JavaScript, CSS and HTML.

The most terrible course I have ever seen in my life and on this site. For some of quiz questions, you feel like you are dumb because you can not make connection between lectures and quizzes. I really wanted to learn java on coursera but It seems impossible to me. Focusing on rbg values and image thingies too much and making me feel uncomfortable at quizzes after watching all those lectures are the main reasons of giving 1 star.

Doesn't explain things well when it comes to JavaScript. They just expect you to jump in and start coding without telling you how to do it. I couldn't pass the tests or do the assignments because I didn't know what I was doing after watching the lectures and reading the material several times. Things like this are very easy for me and I pick things up quickly but I couldn't get the concepts with this so I quit the course.

it's way too easy. I would say after one completes this course, he still has absolutely no ability to get into real web development work. No JQuery, no IIFEs, almost no JavaScript application besides the simplest functions, no Layout instructions, no css style conventions, no media query. The only 'real' method learned insert picture depends on Duke's server while it doesn't have to.

I didnt learn a thing after week 1. Week 2 is horrible and it just gets worse from there. The tests/quizzes tell you to go back to the videos to help understand the questions, if you got them wrong. When the videos dont answer anything in the first place.

If you think you can figure it out, by all means, try it. But i wouldnt recommend this just on how poorly done week 2 is.

Definitely not a course for a beginners, very confusing. The part with the Javascript is a real horror for beginners and even challenging for some newly programmers!

Before I started this course I knew virtually nothing about JS and a bit about HTML and CSS. My short-term goal was to grasp the basics of front end programming because I'm working as a business developer for a software house so I can communicate more effectively with my fellow developers, and a medium-term intent to create my own website from scratch. The lecture pace was perfectly tailored for my routine, half an hour a day from Monday to Friday before sleeping and an hour and a half during the weekend.

Professors are well-skilled and they've presented content in a clear and easily understood manner, even though some of them are not that comfortable with the camera and lack some "acting" skills, but you don't expect that all computer engineers are Steve Jobs of public speaking.

Programming tools, learning materials, and course UI are more practical than attractive but everything is just a click away and I've never felt that something was redundant or unclear, so good job Blue Devils, thank you for making easier my first step into the world where everything is a number (even colors) and building blocks of functional and responsive websites are variables, methods, functions, algorithms, attributes, classes, divisions, canvases, event handlers, pixel coordinates, etc.

Oh, yes, one of my biggest takeaways, and something I'll definitely use when explaining the importance and the price behind the analysis and design aspects of our services: work the MF'ing example by hand so you know what you need to do once you start writing code, then start asap with debugging until everything is just as you want it to be ;)

Cheers,

SO

Good Class, Enjoying it

I acknowledge the high level of the syllabus, it was really designed to bring some advanced contents although advertised as "for beginners". I really felt like nobody reviewed the materials - at least not as thoroughly as they should have - and, as we all know, in programming if you can't find the error very soon you become really frustrated, especially if you're a beginner. You can imagine the overwhelming feeling when you realize that the error was in the instructions, the PowerPoint slides, or in the video, as a single period or comma can really bring unnecessary anxiety and waste a lot of the students' time. Of course we are all here to learn but I did expect more care in preparing those precious materials. To top this off, numerous times I had this feeling I missed an explanation then I would watch and re-watch the videos carefully, and still could not figure it out. I didn't know teaching 20% and asking for 60% in the assessments was supposed to be productive or bring good results. In programming you learn by practicing as long as it is properly directed. So, my advice to people who are considering this course is: be prepared to give your 110% because this course is way more demanding than advertised. And it isn't as interactive as it should. You really feel very lonely in the journey because you'll be spending nights by yourself trying to figure out where is the error in your code. Good news is the forums are full of people on the same boat and there will be a lot of help from other students - sometimes, unfortunately, the only way will be asking for a good soul to post their code, after trying it by yourself for hours to an end. Or maybe the error was in the instructions. All the same.

Anyone could have taught this course because the whole thing was scripted. All the "Teachers" were doing was reading from a prompt instead of using their actual knowledge to actually teach. This course was obsessed with their own JavaScript library that they never taught basic JavaScript foundations and principles. They barely gave you what you needed to complete their assignments and then when you review their example code they have extra functions and code that isn't listed in the assignment. Yet they expect you to know it without explaining it. I cannot recommend this course unless you are specifically trying to learn the Duke Universities specific libraries. Oh and their dukelearntoprogram.com shows just how much they do not know what they are doing. The website's interface is not user-friendly and a big mess. They really show that they know nothing about useability yet they are suppose to be teaching about the foundations of programming. Yet they can't even make their own website functional. Makes me question the quality of learning at Duke University if this is how they represent themselves.

This course is misleading in a lot of ways. It is not for beginners at all. The quizzes in the course are beyond impossible. The lecture videos give an introduction to some concepts, but you are left on your own to figure everything out. They do not provide the proper tools to enable students to understand or pass. Reading through a lot of the discussion boards, there are two types of students: 1. those like me, who have never programmed in their life, and cannot figure any of this out, and 2. Those who have all sorts of experience and write things that are way advanced for a "Beginners" course.

Do yourself a favor, and seriously do some research on appropriate programs before signing up for this one. It needs to be structured way better than what it is now.

Really poor course. Rather than starting from the basics, this course picks random information to work with. Week 1 was information anybody with a computer knows. Week 2 was really good. Week 3 and 4 were completely useless. Rather than starting from the basics they jump into picture manipulation and encoding. Don't take this class if you want to learn about coding.

Concentrated on image manipulation which would be ok if you wanted to build visual websites for a living. If you want to code anything like business applications (like I did) I wouldn't do this course.

Because pixel manipulation wasn't something I was interested in (in the JavaScript section) at all I found the course really boring but it was too late to pull out.

I learned eight lines of Java code in four weeks, and we never implemented any of it into a web application (viz, a script that actually runs in a live website). Read a book instead. It's cheaper, takes about the same amount of time, and you learn a lot more. I gave it a star because one was the minimum. It should be zero because it wasted my time.

So many better options out there to learn to code. The videos on this course had me so confused that I eventually gave up and went to another website to learn what I was supposed to be learning here. Asked a question on the forum that another student was also having a problem and nobody answered me.

Very very boring. Try somewhere else.

I wanted to learn more about programming, but instead I found myself tested on RGB combinations and building a website straight out of 1998. The course is scatter and although it claims to be for beginners, it covers programming concepts rather quickly. If i hadn't taken other programming classes, I would have been lost.

I cannot use this course.

The learning steps are two big and not explained.

Instead of taking us with small steps, they show a bit of content (insufficient) and expect solving it without prior knowledge. In this respect I have had much better course with Udemy; would have expected better teaching skills on Coursera.

The JAVASCRIPT part of the course was to difficult for me I didn't understand enough. I would like to see more tutorial.

I really enjoyed the class! However, after looking through responses that some students received from mentors, I had the impression that some of the mentors behaved contrary to what their title suggestions. Mentors are there to guide students in their learning, however some of the condescending responses mentors were giving some students were discouraging of learning. Again, not all mentors did this, but I think it's worth going through all of the responses students receive and providing facilitation training for mentors so that they have appropriate responses, criticism that is constructive rather than destructive, for students who may be struggling with their code or the content.

I have tried multiple times to learn javascript and have always failed. This class bridged the gap for me and made it easy to learn. Great job Duke & Coursera!

Not enough examples. For any question is only one answer - ''Go to Forum'' ( seems nobody use).

the theory and explanations are very short compared to the proposed activities