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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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51 - 75 of 1,613 Reviews for Java Programming: Solving Problems with Software

By Sowat H R

Apr 26, 2020

Too hard for beginners.

By Lourdes R

Jun 24, 2020

This is a good introduction. You don't need much background in formal programming. I came in knowing only MatLab and that was more than enough to get me through the course. If you don't have any background, I recommend watching the first two chapters of the youtube videos they recommend at the beginning of the course. In a snapshot, you will learn about: classes, objects, strings, loops, conditional statements, and csv files.

By wzhu66

Jan 12, 2023

Very detailed guidance, very helpful forum discussion, classmates are amazing.

The instructor is very patiently put 7 steps way into practice for every programme assignment.

Assignments is difficulty level is suitable however useful. Those assignments are delicately designer, you must done it to have better understanding of what you have learn. And you will love Java!

By Piotr S

Mar 17, 2023

This course uses software which currently does not run on Mac OS Ventura (the customised version of BlueJ environment). There are some workarounds on the forums, but I lost one hour of my life making sure the software does not crash. Apart from this, great course!

By Ahmed K T

Jun 21, 2022

It was very helpful cource I ever had about OOP, this cource realy improved my basic knowledge in programming and how to interact with big data.

Thanks to Coursera team and instructers who prepared this course, highly appreciated .

By Eshank T

Apr 30, 2023

I LOVVVEEEDDDDDDD ITTTTTT.... Although it soaked my soul to learn the concepts and practice coding.. but its all worth it ...

By 21_A0523 S S

Sep 9, 2023

This course is very helpful for those who want to learn java and want to implement java for real life examples.

By Тюрина В

Aug 9, 2019

Понравился курс, все понятно и подробно объясняется. Очень понравились практические задания!

By Wendelin W

Nov 15, 2022

The first few assignments were a bit too big of a leap from the lecture material. But overall I can't say i didn't learn anything! It was challenging and fun towards the end.Definitely felt really frustrating at times, but it's important to just keep going, and referring to the forums if you need to. Getting used to the BlueJ coding environment was half the battle at first. It gets easier the more you work at it. Definitely read all of the directions *extremely* carefully for the exercises, and coding along with the videos really helps.

By isaiah p

Dec 12, 2022

this is great content how ever I think that using bluej is really confusing, I found a way to complete the course with vs code, which made my life easier.

By Prathmesh K

Sep 16, 2023

best course to provide duke university i learn many thinks about software development and java fundamental

By Lasal J

Dec 26, 2020

Honors Section needs to be updated

By Dedeepya V

Jul 23, 2020

The course is good, an excellent way to improve Java programming skills. But it is definitely not meant for beginners. I learnt Java years ago, and i took up this course with an intention of picking up Java again and to continue coding in it, that is why i found it slightly confusing at the starting, but after which i managed to follow through. Though this course is excellent to improve coding, It is not meant for those who have general programming experience, I would say it is more for those who have "Java" programming experience beforehand and a strong grip over the basic Java programming.

By KARTEESWARAN.N.S.K

May 27, 2020

They are using thier own package functions in the entire course. So please use general packages and solve by using it

By Nancy W

Sep 11, 2018

I had been out of programming for many years, and decided to try this Java Programming: Solving Problems with Software course by Duke University on Coursera.org. I really liked the course! It is a great review for me of Java programming basics, without the technical jargon that goes along with object oriented programming. The really nice part is that I can see object oriented principles in action! I enjoyed the way Duke University uses the 7 step process for solving problems consistently through the course. They break problems down into small, manageable pieces, that build up to solving a larger problem. Some concepts include: Basic Java syntax, definitions of class, instance variables and methods (functions); variables, For each loops, While loops, Strings, Java types and Java mathematical operators. The assignments were interesting, and include calculating the perimeter of a shape, finding genes in a strand of DNA, working with CSV formatted files to analyze weather data and to find exports from different countries, and finishing with a MiniProject to find interesting trends in American Baby Names from a CSV formatted data files. The Honors assignment was also fun: processing multiple images to convert them to gray scale, or invert the images, and save them with a new filename. Another really nice aspect of this course is that you use a Duke University (on Coursera) version of BlueJ, an interactive design environment for creating Java programs - where everything is a class! The instructors at Duke have created their own java library, with classes to help new learners easily open and close files in the BlueJ environment, and work with Pixels in an image. Duke also has good documentation for each class, which to me, is better than the documentation on the java oracle website. While the Java documentation on the oracle website is still very difficult to read, I have gotten used to looking some documented class, like Strings, and clicking on the "methods" tab to look at what you can do with them. However, you really do not need to refer to the Java Oracle documentation to complete the assignments - all you need is the documentation from Duke University! I really liked this class!

By GU S H

Jul 13, 2021

This is the second course of Java Programming and not for a very beginner with zero knowledge. Many people said "Assignment is too hard! " But remember that if you studied previous lectures and made the code in the lecture , you could solve every assignments. Even though I did not take the first course of Java Programming from duke univ, I solved every assignments and got score 100. Don't give up and Don't worry since Beginners CAN pass this course.

I give 5 stars because it's a very perfect course I've learned.

It has VERY SHORT video ( which you can studied more often) , INFINITE chance ( you can try infinite time to test your assignment and quiz so you feel confident at programming) and FUN !

Every professors in video explained JAVA programming easily and softly. My english is not good but I understood mostly though. I really appreciated to it. After getting certificate , I remembered 7 steps to make a code. I learned a lot about Java. thank you very much !!

프로그래밍 과제가 어렵다고 하는 사람이 많지만 , 강의를 충분히 듣고 강의에 나온 코드를 스스로 다시 공부한다면 쉽게 해결할 수 있어요. 토론 포럼이나 퀴즈 문제들을 참고하면 수월합니다. 아주 만족스러운 강의 였어요. 동영상도 짧고 간단하게 설명해줘서 머리에 쏙쏙 들어옵니다. 자바 쿠키 만드는 영상 너무 재밌었어요 ^^

By Timothy M

Dec 22, 2020

Reading some of the lower-rated reviews on this, I would caution to take the first course in the specialization, Programming Foundations with JavaScript, HTML and CSS. I would have certainly have been lost without it.

That said, this is a densely-packed course with a wealth of information, and the timeframe is a bit aggressive. However, it is definitely worth it, as you will come out with a strong base in Java methods and a deeper understanding of object-oriented programming.

The course uses a custom version of the BlueJ programming environment, along with a couple of custom libraries provided by Duke. Again, some people were critical of this decision, but I feel it was well-considered. The goal here is to teach fundamental concepts and programming, and by simplifying a few elements, the instructors were better able to focus on that,

The only criticism I would offer is that I wish they were using an online IDE instead, since that would be more "portable" and I could work on it anywhere, rather than being parked at my desk, but that is a minor quibble.

I highly recommend this course.

By Mahboob E

Mar 2, 2017

First two courses are awesome and really built the sense how to tackle real world problems like software engineer.I have learnt a lot from these two courses and eager to learn something new in upcoming course. I only knew very little about C++ and afraid from coding because i forgot syntax and couldn't built and fit logic correctly but after completing these two courses very good percentage in this specialization i feel comfortable towards any language. This specialization is gateway for other languages for me. It helps me to throw my hesitation in coding.

All teachers are good in delivering concept.Also the assignments and mini projects are really challenging , hence they polish concepts that teacher delivers in lectures.

Further more i really likes the shirts of Dr.Robert. I appreciate coursera and Duke MOOCS teams for organizing this very novice friendly to expert course on Java.

I hope and waiting for next serialization which leads from where this one left.

By Swarnesh R J

Jun 19, 2018

This is a very well put together course, efficient lecture videos and some brilliant quiz exercises. But the expected times are way off. Some of the assignments which say that expected time is 10 mins might take hours even for an experienced coder, let alone a novice in this field. Moreover, I posted 4-5 threads on discussion forum and I never received even a single reply. If i have paid for this course I would expect to get my doubts cleared but the mentors and even the peers don't respond to discussion forum. One of the codes in a lecture video is actually incorrect and will not produce the desired output in one special case. I pointed that out in discussion forum but no one responded. So I did learn many things from this course but I never got my doubts cleared, so I would not recommend this course to a beginner.

By Jade F

Dec 2, 2018

This is a great first course to take at Coursera - you'll find the the content is high quality, the assignments progressively challenge you, and sets the tone that you're going to get a lot out of the courses but it's something you'll have to work for.

I thoroughly enjoyed the process of moving through the course and would recommend it to others, with the caveat that you're not going to just breeze through without putting in some time to focus on the assignments.

I definitely feel that I came away having advanced my skills and having accomplished something! That's the highest accolade you could give to any training.

Thanks!

By ZUsas

Oct 6, 2018

Beutifully done! Well organized. The assignments were challenging, but were well documented, so it was easy to follow along and complete them.

The two projects at the end of the course were terrific as well. I really enjoyed working on them and then showing them to friends and family.

The videos were clear, coherent and concise. I could watch them on the go and sometimes all at once. I loved that flexibility. The topics were also well chosen. Basic programming. But still quite challenging.

Excellent course! I highly recommend it. I look forward to completing the rest of the specialization as well.

By Elohim C

Apr 8, 2020

I'm very disappointed about the Baby Names quizes answers, It kept me 2 days finding the errors you set as correct answers, I had to modify my code in order to respond an incorrect answer. I can deal with Lecture erros like the one you stated that .getCSVParser(false) returns no header (False). The .getCSVParser(false) returns a header so the answer to getRank() returns an extra number wrong number that never gives you the rank 1. You should have fixed this error on the quiz so you don't frustrate the students with wrong answers. If you change the answers I'll change my one stars review to 5 stars.

By Sebastián C

Feb 10, 2018

I enjoyed it a lot, it was well explained and some of the quizzes were challenging enough to reestructure my method for testing my program more than one time. The videos were pretty good and I think they covered most of the subjects you needed to for the assignments. Of course, there is some practice you'll need to do by yourself sometimes and that includes going into the documentation and looking for some methods or clarifications but that is understandable, considering that in any course with some degree of difficulty you will need (most probably than not) to practice a bit in your home.

By NAVEEN R

May 5, 2020

Wish I could give more ratings. I have always believed in project based learning where you learn something only if you are going to use it. This class first introduces some problem, then gives the tools to solve them and you don't have to remember every syntax. With practice, it just sticks in the brain.

This course is even better for those who are transitioning from similar language like C++ or C#. I myself used C++ for last few years. But this transition was so smooth. Really loved it. Looking to complete more Java Programming courses in this specialization.

Best Wishes!

By Belyaev

Dec 19, 2015

I really liked the course mainly due to providing a clear vision to all sub tasks needed to solve before and during programme development; I liked very much that the solution is started with problem statement and analysing; this helps to set good practice to problem solving and decision making: before digging into implementation one must understand the task; analyse it and get what is involved and needed to say the job is done and then find a solution, implement it and check that implemented solution does what it was intended to do; thank you very much for clarifying it