DB
Oct 12, 2017
Great into to Java, instructors have clearly put thought in to the format with the choose your own learning style videos, and additional coverage where it may be needed. These have been very helpful.
LR
Oct 13, 2015
I loved this course! The course videos and the projects sharpened my idea about some of the toughest concepts of Java and OOP. I recommend this course to anyone interested in learning OOP in Java. ☺
By Frank T
•Oct 3, 2019
Support for the course has ended and the exercises are no longer compatible with new versions of Java. After solving an OpenGL issue and installing JRE 1.8, the starter program still wasn't working as it should.
By Wesley N
•Feb 10, 2020
Pretty terrible course. Two observations so far:
1.) The libraries that this course requires you to use are incredibly outdated and broken. Getting basic examples to run is sometimes impossible. I'm literally talking about the most basic examples copied and pasted straight from this class.
2.) The moderators do not interact or help when it comes to finding work-arounds for the broken code libraries provided. Many people have posted with regards to these problems, yet no one ever gets a response.
3.) This is the third course in a 4 course specialization on OOP. I am on week 11 in this specialization, and so far very little has been mentioned about OOP concepts. We are using OOP concepts, but without explanation. Every once in a while, a key word is thrown in, but never explained. The whole course is literally a professor telling you what code to copy and paste into your own program. When complete, you run the program and it works like they told you it would (well duh, they tell you exactly what to write).
The course is garbage. I'm going to finish it because I've payed a couple hundred dollars at this point and I want the certificate. However, I will be posting any and everywhere to let people know not to waste their money.
By Eva G D T
•Jan 28, 2020
I think the content of the course as far as objectives is covered in the lectures both video and readings. However, the practice in this course through programming needs to be updated as it still uses Applets which are a deprecated technology as of 2015-2017. I think that if there is going to be programming assignments for students they should be provided in a form that at least uses current technologies, especially when advertised as "real world". The course has also not, at a minimum, been updated with "how to's" for how to run the programming assignments using the old technologies, as it should explain that Java 8 or prior is needed (not the current Java 13 or newer).
By Pradyumn A S
•May 4, 2020
This course should be removed from coursera as the library it uses for the project is outdated
By Krishna K
•Jun 30, 2019
Compared to the Duke University classes, I think this is a low quality course. I managed to get most of the assignments done in a short time. I don't like the fact that the classes are heavily dependent on starting with eclipse. I would have preferred very much if the class would have showed you how to set everything up independent of any IDE's. I would have preferred to write programs and debug them in my editor of choice.
Also, the course is unnecessarily spread out for the actual amount it teaches. I think the entire course can be summarized in two weeks of materials. I would say that only week4-5-6 are important to understanding OOP.
While the videos are good, some sections are pointless. I don't really care for the videos that talk about why someone had difficulty with a particular topic. I DO like the videos that walks through some examples/scenarios. They aided in my understanding.
I don't think the assignments are well designed. While you can follow through them, I don't think they were as good as the Duke courses. (which are course 1 and 2 of the OOP Java specialization. This course is course 3).
I was not impressed with this course. But I did learn some OOP concepts. I don't think this course does a good job on teaching you OOprogramming or how to think about designing projects using Objects.
By Konstantin P
•Feb 21, 2016
Enroll this course if you intend to become a programmer and need fundamental knowledge in Object Oriented Programming. Here you can study the subject and apply new things in a real curious project.
By Nicholas B
•Oct 8, 2018
Would have preferred if the map was built incrementally, with me continuing each exercise with my own map rather than a new, supplied map each time. That would make me feel more ownership towards it.
By Jonathan Z
•Oct 19, 2018
You are given outdated and messy code to work with, I came back to this project after several more years of java experience and it was actually made tricky by the horrible starting points. I rewrote almost every project from scratch in 1/8th of lines.
By Dixon B
•Oct 13, 2017
Great into to Java, instructors have clearly put thought in to the format with the choose your own learning style videos, and additional coverage where it may be needed. These have been very helpful.
By Labib M R
•Oct 14, 2015
I loved this course! The course videos and the projects sharpened my idea about some of the toughest concepts of Java and OOP. I recommend this course to anyone interested in learning OOP in Java. ☺
By Roussel K
•Dec 4, 2015
This is course is really awesome and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested to Software Engineering using JAVA programming Language.
A little history about my background will help understand my excitement about this course. I am a newly graduated in the field of Electrical Engineering. So far, I wrote code mainly in C++ and I have not really participated to very challenging programming assignments. Looking for job (Unluckily so far ) I quickly realize that Java programming is really big on the job market. For these reasons, I got this book in Java programming called "Starting Out with JAVA", but may be due to lack of discipline I was not really able to move deeply in book.
However since I have enrolled in this course, I am being influenced tremendously by the design of the class.I got so much positive vibe from the professor who make this class really exciting. The level of details use in lecture videos make this class really easy to follow. In addition, the class assignment are just plainly cool, practical, and challenging. I really feel like I am learning from expert in the field. This fact has raised my confidence that my gaining the skills combined in this specialization I magnify my qualification on the job market.
Thank you.
By Tiffany R
•Apr 5, 2019
The peer reviews for final grade was challenging in a way that it relies solely on the honesty of your peers. I ended up with dishonest grades from peers. Specifically the person gave me grade 0 and a " . " in each comment section and called it the day. Nothing stopping more people from doing that actually. Other than that, the materials are great and assignments were challenging. Students who wanted to complete the course honestly actually had to work hard at researching to success.
By Aaron G
•Jan 10, 2020
Probably my least favorite in the series so far. Mostly because much of the code was already prewritten, which makes it difficult to learn anything. Moreover, the explanations of some complex topics like the sorting and searching algorithms, and especially the use of Java's Comparable class is severely lacking. I had no idea what I was supposed to do week 5 and week 6 suffered as a consequence. Also, mouseClicked and event handling needs better explanations.
By Austin H R
•Feb 6, 2016
It needs project based exams, not quizzes. These project exams should be a combination of automated programming tasks, like the kind you find on HackerRank or Codeforces and peer assessment based projects that asks students to evaluate the readability of each others code. As it currently stands, this course is a joke.
By Mohamed M M A K
•Mar 5, 2016
An excellent course for taking a step forwards in Java programming. The instructors are great and I love the concept challenge videos as they help clarify new concepts.
The programming assignments are good although sometimes felt like they were not challenging enough.
The course material isn't that long and the course could easily be completed in 2-3 weeks or even less.
Despite that it is not an introductory course to Java, I was able to follow along smoothly without prior Java experience. However previous programming experience is required.
By hoa n
•Feb 28, 2023
Before attending this course, I was a bit confused because I had read some low-star reviews about it. Nonetheless, I decided to give it a try and it did not disappoint me. Many bad reviews about this course complained about the old library and version of Java used. I agree it was a problem, but I was able to solve it within an hour.
This course focuses on OOP, particularly on the concepts of inheritance and polymorphism in OOP, and how to use these concepts to solve real-world problems by implementing them as interfaces and inheritance, which makes the implementation more flexible and generic. The lecturer does not explicitly teach how to apply these concepts to real-world scenarios, but the provided code for each weekly assignment was implemented using these concepts, and by reading and solving the assignments, you will learn how to apply them and what they mean.
In summary, I have learned a lot of useful things about OOP in this course despite the use of outdated technology. I think it does not really matter because I want to learn the concepts, not new technology, through this course. However, one downside is that there is no mentor, and you have to learn by yourself. San Diego seems to be no longer providing support for this course, so I am giving it 4 stars. I hope this review helps.
By Shoukang
•Jun 29, 2021
This course mainly explains classes in java, and teaches me how to install the IDE, use GUI, which is fine. Some sorting algorithm at O(n^2) complexity, no merge sort. Since it doesn't teach recursion I will take it. However, the practice is too little. After I finish the course I write less than 100 lines of codes. It is not enough to get familiar with Java. We are doing some very minor changes to make the project work, it feels boring. The project is a toy, the marker info appears behind other markers and marker outlines overlap with each other. I don't feel it serves as a good practice platform.
If you want to take the course, here are some tips to save your time. What you really need are the core materials and readings, do some concept challenges without watching the student discussions is also fine. The other videos are pointless, and childish. I believe these videos are for children as this course face students with various backgrounds.
By Jade F
•Apr 15, 2019
This was my favorite course out of the whole specialization - the way the instructors set up the curriculum makes you feel like you're taking a real college course, and the assignments are fun, not too challenging, and interesting. The use of 'unfolding maps' and processing is a really good choice, and though I won't be using 'unfolding maps' in the future (it's kind of outdated and isn't used in the field), I gained a lot of insight into how geodata is used and was easily able to apply what I'd learned using other map platforms.
As for object oriented programming, you couldn't ask for a better way to convey the material. I highly recommend this course to people wanting to explore java programming, or OOP in general.
By Ali A
•Mar 1, 2016
This course was a really comprehensive package explaining all the basic concepts of Object Oriented Programming . The instructors clearly explains the concepts of inheritance , polymorphism , searching , sorting etc. relating it as much as possible to real world examples. The concept challenge questions clearly helps you to understand the subtle nuances that the instructor wants to explain . The quiz are easy .The only thing that i found hard was to complete was the final assignment as i had minimal programming experience with data structures but if you stick to it , you will definitely make it , just like me :)
By Ahmed M
•Sep 29, 2015
Best Java course I have seen for years. And Best team of instructors in any of Coursera courses. Hope to have later specializations from the same Instructors. I am just delaying certificate until finishing the due java specialization, as I felt it may need introductory course as advised by the great instructor Christine
Great Instructor/Course from great University as great as the rest of San Diego university courses. Well respected Universities in addition to Duke, Michigan and Virginia Compared to the very short courses from other reputable Universities
By Uriel M
•Aug 24, 2019
This is an excelent course. It contains illustratives examples about inheritance and a little bit of polymorphism. This concepts are important for well written and easy to maintain code. A student can work with real data sets (earthquake data and airport data) and use the popular IDE Eclipse. The core videos are well explained. Additionally I learned variable scope. This is not a beginer course. Before enrolling in this specialization I completed the beginner specialization from Duck university.
By Akash k S
•May 31, 2017
One of the best course I have done on coursera. Everything is awesome about the course final project helped to extensively test my skill. This course is for learner with basic knowledge in java.
By Andries
•Dec 21, 2020
The core content is decent, but the course badly needs an update. A Java course relying heavily on applets and an outdated UI framework for exercises and assignments (applets have actually been removed totally from Java 11+, and the Processing library relies on a native library that's not available on the latest Mac OS) is definitely not on. Would also be good to update the course with more up-to-date Java 8+ coding techniques.
By Mohamed M
•Mar 19, 2016
in the beginning of the course i thought i'll get a good experience as usual on coursera, but i was wrong ...
a lot of things >> to be introduced in next course
confusing data types & working with things i don't know about it.
you've said that, anyone with basics of programming could pass this course and after 6 months i couldn't.
please be sure about the prerequisites next time.
By Pat C
•Mar 5, 2016
This course delivers a great learning experience. I have not only learned the theory of object oriented design through java. I have also gained hands on experience of these challenging concepts through the java programming assignments. An outstanding feature of this course is the ability of the three professors to relate rigorous theory to hands on experience by means of the java assignments. Hats off to three outstanding Computer Science professors for the great teaching, enthusiasm and ability to motivate me the learner. This course delivers 100% on its promise to provide a solid foundation in object oriented design and programming through java.