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Excellent

This was a decent overview of FP principals, but a poor introduction to the Scala language. In fact, the requirements should just come out and state that you must have prior Scala knowledge to most thoroughly appreciate the course. The last 2 assignments may have been ok for 3 hours (doubtful) for someone with Scala experience, but they really should be marked more appropriately for time for those of us new to Scala. I'd say 6 hours; easily more than that for the last assignment.

Also, no slides or related handouts are provided. If you remember seeing something on one of the slides shown, you'll have to look back, scanning through all the videos trying to find it. This is a very poor way to manage course content - forcing students to rely solely on the videos.

I'm left feeling I've only learned a smattering here and there of Scala, and don't think I'll take the remainder of the specialization as I had intended.

This is a reasonably thorough introduction to the principals of functional programming in scala, but to fully grasp the material presented I found it necessary to include supplemental material such as the functional programming in scala book by Paul Chiusano (forward by the course instructor funnily enough). One point of frustration however was the near total unavailability of the course TA's or instructor. Also because the only forum for interacting with them is entirely public it's impossible to receive any formal code review apart from the automated tests they run when you submit. There were multiple occasions where I wanted feedback on not just the technical correctness of my solution but also to know if there might have been a more idiomatic or generally efficient (read: tail-recursive) way to express some peculiar bit of logic.

The first couple of weeks were awesome - love Scala the language and the whole functional approach, and the detailed description of how the language actually fits together.

Also love how the homework teaches you how to setup IDE, create unit tests, and submit actual code as homework - not just workbooks and multiple-choice quizzes like in some other courses.

But why oh why was it necessary to go in specific detail over how to define natural numbers from first principles using classes, or spend a whole week on lists, etc? All that might be fine for general education in a university context, but as someone who does want to understand Scala, but from a perspective of getting cool things done - that bit was a total waste of time.

Would be a better and shorter course if those 'didactic' bits were trimmed.

I completed this course in a single day (about 8 hours) having substantial experience as java programmer. However I feel that if course is to teach Scala, it should not be so heavy on all functional programming tricks (which in the given examples and assignments are often too artificial, inefficient and awkward). Or if the course is to teach functional programming, probably Scala is not the most user-friendly choice. Also as a developer I feel displeased with assignments stub code poorly formatted with indentation bORken both in classes and functions.

Important questions are left unanswered (for years!), instructions of certain assignments are incomplete and leave the student to guess (esp. when questions go unanswered when asked). Love Odersky, but this course as organized and presented is a real let down.

Update: Great potential to learn very useful concepts if you can push through in spite of the issues. I am going to press on with the follow-up courses in this specialization. Genuinely hope this course is updated and fixed so that others can complete it without unnecessary friction.

The grading seems to round up to 100%, which makes the assignments that are already generally easy far too easy. I took this course instead of just doing my own thing so that I could get some structure and motivation. While there was some structure, it was quite basic, and the motivation was diminished by "good enough" not being much. I was considering taking the later courses in the specialization, but I'm afraid that without real grading I won't learn as much as if I learn more slowly outside of Coursera.

Es interesante ver al autor del lenguaje de programación dar el curso, pero es exremadamente dificil se quedan cortos con los requisitos, a pesar de que tengo experiencia en programacion muchos de los conceptos van desde matematicas dicretas a otros conceptos complejos por lo que el curso incluso la espacializacion no esta orientada a datos o big data o curiosos solo para programadores con experiencia en scala

Great content but the rhythm is a bit fast, I didn't feel fully equipped to manage exams, indeed, each of them took me at least 2 days to solve and I have rage quit for a complete week for the last exam. I'm going to redo some of them before start the second course.

Apart from that, the format is cool and it's pleasant to watch the teacher solving the rare mistakes he did with ease.

I really feel that the assignments were out of sync with the content of the lectures. Occasionally it seems that you needed to watch all the videos in order to go back and complete assignments that should have been done already. It was very confusing without a background in the material. I liked the lecture material a lot, but feel the assignments should have been more connected.

The assignments took me so long. It was supposed to be 3 hours but, got obsessed to have them ended ok, but in 15 hours nearly. I would recommend to build up from very basic stuff, and as the learning advances, going into more difficulty.

The hints for the assignments were valid in the the last lesson, but for another lesson, I think lesson 4, there was no hint.

Thanks

If looking only at what is being taught in this course, it's quite good. And I can heartily recommend it.

The lecture videos are extremely monotonic! Which makes it _very_ hard to keep focus and pay attention. It feels like hypnosis sometimes. Several colleagues have the same experience with this course. Which is why I'm only giving it 3 stars.

The points covered are interesting and useful, with an insight on Functional Programming. However, for newcomers on functional programming, the assignments are a bit too far from the videos or lack the instructions needed to complete them in 3 hours. Some hints for the toughest parts would be very much appreciated.

1)lecture slides in text format would be a great thing - to review smth you have to scroll through the video every time

2) some of the content is outdated - there are a lot of method demonstration that are currently deprecated

3) It would be great to see Java vs Scala syntax comparison more

The course is not really about Functional Programming, but more about Scala in general. I've learnt much more about FP by reading Learn You a Haskell for Great Good by Miran Lipovača, and Functional Programming in Scala by Paul Chiusano and Rúnar Bjarnason

The only attractive thing in this course is a name of the author. The course itself is poorly designed, homework is hardly connected to the content of lectures. Might be interesting as an introduction for Scala newcomers, though.

Instead of teaching Scala syntax, it focuses on teaching functional programming logic and conventions, which makes it a very challenging course. If you are looking for an introduction to Scala, this is not it.

Poderia focar mais em funcional e explicar melhor... conteudo esparso e denso com poucos exemplos prtáicos.... senti bastante dificuldade, se noã fossem alguns livros eu noã entenderia bem o scala.

after python very difficult. would be good with explaining for IDE using instead of just reading

so much focus on recursive programing

NA

I have the feeling that Scala is a language that may have a nice logical consistency, but is far too much overloaded with symbols and possibilities for achieving exactly the same thing in different ways. I think you can appreciate this course if you have a background in theoretical computer science, but for all others who choose the course to learn Scala as a language without academic interest, that is just confusing.

A Scala beginner can also not appreciate how elegant and concise the produced code is and that you can put the meaning of hundreds of lines of imperative code into only a few lines of functional code (without side-effects!). For a beginner, it is more important that you can still read and understand your own code two weeks after finishing this course.

From other coursera courses, I am used to getting the course material (slides, example code) as a download, either linked in every week's curriculum or in the course overview resources section. For this course, I was not able to find it and have manually typed the exercises during the lectures. If it is actually there and I just could not find it, consider this statement pointless.

Concerning the tools setup, I have the impression that the descriptions in the beginning of the course are very detailed, however quite outdated. I ended up following a guide on installing sbt from here https://www.scala-sbt.org/1.x/docs/Installing-sbt-on-Windows.html and have used it with Visual Studio code.

Another thing that I at least did not catch in this course was how to actually create, deploy and run a simple Scala command line application. Do all people ever just use the IntelliJ IDE worksheets? The problem could also be that I do not have a Java background and am missing some knowledge that is obvious to all others.

I've tried to take the course and have already completed 3 assignments. I have to say that I still do not understand how to code basic stuffs on scala. Going to unenroll from the course. The course is too technical, no syntax was explained, given that I do not have any background from scala, this course is poorly presented. Most of the assignments are algorithm based, although it is not too hard to me (3 hours assignment but I am able to finish it within 1 hour), but the course is not enjoyable.

I expected something different from a "Principles" course. It is expected to have a Computer Science background and the assignments are not easy at all. I mean, they don't need to be stupid, but they can be really frustrating for a novice (since i thought this course was for novice students). Lessons are ok, but i really hate that the teacher doesn't give the examples and you have to write them by your own, slowing down the pace of your learning.