RT
Reviewed Aug 24, 2026
Fun and challenging (significantly so compared to other courses). A reasonable step up in difficulty compared to the first course in the specialization.
Way too much work for one course. A lot of it applies to topics that aren't covered in this course. A ton of background knowledge is needed to succeed here. Or at least plan to spend 20-30 hours/week on the homeworks multiplied over several weeks per homework. So many unecessary tests and steps. I feel like the homeworks deviated from what was taught in the videos, that most of the time I forgot what I was supposed to be learning in this class because I was so focused on the minor details of the homeworks. And the homeworks are all or nothing. Either you get that coveted green checkmark saying all of your work succeeded or you fail the entire homework. No partial credit at all. I had to buy an extra 16 Gb of RAM and a 1 Tb storage device to support the VM we make for this course. That took so much time. Also each homework assignment depends on the last ones, including from the previous course! All the different repos get so confusing! Repo 1 becomes repo 3 which then works with repo 6, which is now repo 8, but then becomes repo 9... very confusing. I feel like there is a better way. I did learn a lot of very high level things though! Docker, github runners, virtual machines, buildroot, yocto, and kernel development. I appreciated the help from the TAs, even though ChatGPT was basically answering most of my questions. And the professor actually helped out the TA with a question he couldn't answer for me! That's a first for these Coursera courses! Most of the time I don't even know if the professor knows what is going on in their courses. Overall way too difficult of a course, but I acknowledge the skill and depth of knowledge of the professor and TAs that helped to put it together.