I am very happy that this course is part of the Object Oriented Java Specialization - the one which has 2 courses from Duke and 2 courses from UCSD. If you are reading this, it goes without saying that you are interested in learning more about Java and getting certification - this course will do that but begin to blend in a lot more topics that are specific to Computer Science - topics like algorithm efficiency for sorting and finding data.

This shift towards Computer Science theory, as opposed to practical Java programming, may surprise you. This can be challenging material - but in the context of the course, you can evaluate how you feel about it without committing too much - since it's the final course in the specialization.

Regardless of your receptiveness to theory, the content is highly relevant in practice, just be warned that you may not breeze through this course. It will definitely be worth it though, as knowledge of these topics are what's expected of people with a Computer Science background in the field today.

This course by Alvarado, Minnes and Porter was clear, interesting and well presented. In fact, it's one of the better MOOC courses that I've taken.

The assignments were of medium difficulty: not too easy but certainly not so difficult that you will get frustrated and give up. In addition, they are interesting assignments. As mentioned, the lectures are concise, clear and interesting. In fact, I recently signed up for another course on algorithms and dropped it because it was SO BORING. Also, I am taking a course on machine learning that presents algorithms. In contrast, that course is not clear whatsoever; if I hadn't taken this one then I would be very confused. Finally, I like how they have the Concept Challenges where students discuss a problem. The thought processes of multiple people talking through the problem was helpful for me.

As a result, I highly recommend this course to anyone who wants to brush up on performance calculations (i.e., Big O), basic data structures, and a few basic algorithms.

For someone who has some experience of coding but did not venture much into data structures - this is a superb course as it covers an introduction to data structures, their performance, test driven development, benchmarking and more. The lectures and project materials were simply great for introducing the concepts as they were challenging but not too overwhelming for the typical intermediate level beginner like myself.

Top class course with top class instructors. Later after completing the course I come back to this material to refresh the material. Top class instruction.

well prepared, thank you so much!

Great Course, really loved it.

The idea of applying linkedlists, hashmaps, trees to solve a commonly occurring problem of Word suggestions is cool. It allows the students appreciate the practical context in which these algorithms are useful. The assignments can be made a bit harder to make the learning that much more worthwhile.

Love this course combining the data structure with some basic real word problem

Introductory course to data structures. The lectures are good, however the assignments are too much guided. Sometimes you can get it done without actually understanding what is going on.

This course is a excellent introduction to data structures and algorithms for beginners. The lectures are extensive, complete and very helpful. The assignments are challenging and stimulating. The project is the construction of a text editor with check spelling, auto-correction, suggestion and more. It was the first time I felt involve in a large project, and you learn a little bit of software engineering too. This is the second course in the specialization and it overcomes the previous course in every aspect.

I'll give five stars. The only thing I didn't like was the concept challenges, and not because of the challenges but because of the discussion with the UC San Diego learners. They are not beginners, they are actor pretending they don't know how to solve the problems when it is evident -at least it was my impression- that they are advanced students. I found them annoying and not helpful at all.

Great course. I am learning so many things. This course has improved my structured thinking to start with a real world problems in many ways. I have adopted test-driven-development cycle for all my work which has improved my code quality significantly. All those real word challenges videos are a nice inspiration. My favorite videos are the "How I Struggled" because I am able to relate myself facing the similar kind of situation and got boosted to continue. Liked course structure. It works for me.

Mia, Christine and Leo are just awesome . Thanks for all your efforts. Really grateful to you and University of California, San Diego. Thanks.

This course covers some of the industry standard applications and they can be implemented. This really challenges the programmer to sit down and work some of the very good algorithms. And it shows the real usage of the Java data structures.

Professors Christine, Mia and Leo's teachings were very professional and helpful.

A word about the projects. After a student finishes the projects, they can confidently say they did something good with the data structures in Java.

Thank you for the course instructors and everyone who worked behind this.

Highly recommended for the serious Java programmers.

I love this class. There are a couple of data structure classes in Coursera and i think this class fits me the most. I like that it teaches data structures and how to use them in the real world. So, you will be building actual programs with the data structures you learn . It skips alot of the math stuff and I love it because i am not trying to be a "real computer scientist" . I dont need to know how to write a math proof on how a algorithm works what not. Maybe in the future when i want to do research, but as of right now, I just want to build cool software and have fun.

I'm graduated in System Analysis, not Computer Sciences, and learned to program only by experience. After 20 years it's a good deal but still I missed the theoretical background and this always annoyed me. I knew and used to make good use of all the structures presented in this course but never could quite explain how or why, or talk in asymptotic notations. Now I can. I didn't stop here, I do take some topics to deep dive during the lectures. It's being a great experience and I only wish I could have more time to keep myself always enrolled in some course.

This is one of the best series of courses I came along in online MOOC platform, such a brilliant course, this whole specialization is brilliant, such a interesting projects, I'm disappointed that I live in country that isn't that much wealthy to help this Specialization and to be able to do Capstone Project , but I wish all the best hope to finish all in time, this is in my top 3 online MOOC Courses and I saw a lot of them.

I wish all the best to this team and people that made this possible.

The course is fantastic! The professors are very enthusiastic and creative: they explain difficult subjects very clearly and provide visual aids and in-video quizes to enhance more deep understanding of material.

Special thanks for the project assignments! They are very interesting and well-laid.

I would recommend this course to programmers who want to deepen and practice their data-structures skills. For the novices this course should be taken after the first course of the specialization.

A very informative course which lies at the heart of Computer Science. Gives you not just the fundamentals behind all the data structures, but also makes you implement Linked Lists and Custom Tree data structures for specific problems. All programming assignments are great, fun, and challenging, and really make you practice the newly learnt data structures in real time. The faculty teaching this course is really very thorough in their teachings and are simply awesome.

Many thanks to all the people who created this course! I really learned a lot about data structure (LinkedList, tree, etc) and I am feeling much more confidence in programming after taking this course.

Although some of the assignments were difficult for me (I stucked a lot), but I am really happy and proud when I got full score from the grader :) Really recommend if you have programming experience but new to data structure!!

I liked everything about this course: the theory, the programming assignments, the consistency and clarity in explaining complex things. The material was structured, well-organized, valuable and helpful. I really liked the lecturers. Mia Minnes, Leo Porter and Christine Alvarado are the ones of the best I've seen in my whole life! A Huge Thank You for your hard work and your strong dedication to what you do!

Since my majors was bioengineering, whenever my computer science friends discussed about data structures and their importance, I always wondered what data structures are and why they hold so much importance. The course and the instructors who have beautifully designed and developed it, gave me really good insights into data structures. Thank you Coursera, UCSD, Mia Minnes, Christine Alvarado, Leo Porter!

Excellent course! I truly recommend this course. Christine Alvarado, Mia Minnes and Leo Porter have created a great course on performance and data structures. You get to learn about regular expressions, Big-O notation and searching data structures such as trees and tries. I especially enjoyed the programming assignments that Christine, Mia and Leo had prepared for us, fascinating real life examples.

This course provided me with the understanding of necessity for implementation of various data structures. It was a bit more challenging, but fun at the same time because it helped me understand underlying algorithms that are implemented in many text processing applications. If you want to learn "serious stuff" this is the course to take.

It was really a very good course, you can learn many data structures and its implementations along with programing assignments and quizes which are quite challenging. The idea of concept challenge was awesome. You could learn performing efficiency of the algorithms, benchmarking, linked lists trees hashmaps and other data structures.

Very good courses. It introduces some basic ideas of Java. Even though some contents are very basic, I learned some useful knowledge regarding computer compiler associated with Java which is really helpful for me to have a better understand of programming. These knowledge also offer me an edge learning harder content. Thank you!

A very useful and instructive course. The difficult abstract ideas are explained very clear way. You learn the basic theory, learn to develop understading why and where use a specific Data Structure and the porjects and examples are real world problem.

I am very happy that i had found this course and finished it. Thanks a lot