The BlueJ compiler is highly problematic but the course was okay.

You should have some Java skills before to do this course

The assignments were not described in a helpful manor.

you need to learn oop before starting this course

I think more guides in Assignments would be ok.

I like theroy portino but not practical.

A bit complicated for a beginner.

Its a good course for beginners

This is not for pure beginner.

Slow pace and long dialogues.

Absolutely not for beginners

bluej is not good enough,

its good with good quizes

Week 2 needs to be fixed.

Tq forn this certificate

The course was good .

It is a good course.

nice expericence

very good

good one

Too hard

This course made me want to stop coding. I've done other courses on Coursera and have learned so much, but in this specialization, I find myself dreading every single week of "learning" and assignments. Its not Java itself that's making it bad, its the way Duke teaches:

First, the course says that no previous Java knowledge is necessary, though from Week 1, that is clearly not the case. They literally didn't teach me the proper syntax to get started. I have to buy "Mastering Java" from Amazon to get base level knowledge. Second, about 25% of Duke's weekly assignments is stuff they haven't gone over. Its fine to struggle, that's a part of learning, but the jump from what's been covered in the lesson to what the final task of the weekly assignment goes over is frustrating to say the least. Programming languages give no mercy for syntax errors, so when you haven't learned the syntax for something you've assigned, its gets painful very quickly and there's no way out because the original assignment/request was so random to begin with that you're not sure what the final output should be, therefore you can't figure it out on your own. Lastly, their estimated time it takes to complete an assignment is WAY off. I've done plenty of courses on Coursera and they usually overestimate how long assignments take. Duke drastically underestimates it. Every week's assignment supposedly takes 10 minutes. I know what I'm doing and every assignment takes at least 1-1.5 hrs because of all the random stuff they want me to do.

I hoped Duke's nonsense stopped after the Javascript course (yes, they assigned Javascript in their Java specialization. Should've been the first red flag). For my sanity's sake, I'm withdrawing from this course and will avoid any course led by Duke University.

So far I am fairly disappointed with this course, it spends too much time on such simple concepts and skips over the really important ones. I was hoping for more of a 'university' level quality class, and instead I find myself listing to the instructors talk about subjects that are hardly related to what the quiz and lab work content will be, and when the time comes to work on the lab and quiz portions of the class, I find myself not knowing what they are asking and having to do my own research to try to figure out the answers as opposed to feeling that I at least was 'taught' the material in preparation for the quiz or lab.

Video instructors are knowledgeable, and I like the challenge of the assignments. But I recently got stuck on an assignment and went to the discussion forum for help. No response from any of the moderators or peers. Plus the codesnippet tool to post code to the forum is absolute crap. Will not format any code even if it is written in line by line. I have been fruitless trying to search for help outside of this course so far as well.

Lots of wasted time.

I really want to finish the class, but I doubt I will ever waste my money on these Duke\Java classes again. I will go elsewhere.

I completed the course. However, without my husband's help (who is a senior software engineer), I'm sure that I could have not. This course is surely not for a beginner. Though I had taken a C++ course in a community college before, I still found this course is so hard. Each lesson seems short, simple and easy to understand, but the assignments (Reading and quizzes) are crazy with very little reference document and clear instruction. Most of the time, I spent around 5 hours for each such assignment, not 10 minutes as it is allocated.