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Learner Reviews & Feedback for C for Everyone: Programming Fundamentals by University of California, Santa Cruz

4.5
stars
6,308 ratings

About the Course

This course is for everyone. In the new world we live in, coding is a universally valuable skill, whether you're a scientist, artist, or a humanist. Algorithms are everywhere, and we all have to understand how they work. The C language is particularly well suited as an introduction to coding: It's a tried-and-true language, and it allows you to understand computing processes at a deep level. No prior knowledge of coding is needed for this course. We'll start at the beginning. The time estimated time commitment for this course is five hours a week for five weeks....

Top reviews

MA

Jun 21, 2020

I am really happy I did this course. The instructor is a really experienced teacher. This course gave a good start for learning the fundamentals and moving onto complex programming languages like C++.

CN

Apr 21, 2020

Great course to gain a foundation in C programming! The video lectures, coding examples, and peer reviewing of assignments allows one to learn quick and in real time. Would definitely recommend it.

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1626 - 1650 of 1,742 Reviews for C for Everyone: Programming Fundamentals

By Hazem S M

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May 4, 2020

Very good course

By srikar t

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May 12, 2020

not that clear

By YAGNIK D

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Sep 10, 2020

Very Good

By Prapti S

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Apr 17, 2022

nice!!!

By RAHUL D

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Jul 10, 2021

thanks

By Dipraj H

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Jul 9, 2020

Thanks

By Kartik B

•

Jan 25, 2022

good

By LIEPASS S I

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Jan 5, 2022

good

By Parichay D

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May 13, 2021

nice

By ADARSH A

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Sep 20, 2020

Good

By Rohit K

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Aug 14, 2020

Good

By Deepak T

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Jul 25, 2020

Nice

By keerthana

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Jun 2, 2020

good

By Leandra M

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May 3, 2022

Very disappoining course. I give this course a 2 on a scale of 0 to 5. Instead of this course, I recommend potential students look at other C programming courses.

Teaching Style: The course is taught in an old style, where there are many lectures covering theory without practical examples. The newer and better teaching style is to teach a bit of theory, practice writing code with some practical exercises, then present more theory, then more practice writing more code. In this course one of the weeks in this course is only lectures. For that week it would have been nice to get some breaks between the lectures to practice writing code using the concepts that were just presented.

The concept of presenting lecture material hand written on a white board is terrible. It is difficult to read the scribbling and cursive writing. The lecture material could be much better presented if it was printed in a Word document or on a Powerpoint slide, or in a graphical computer tool.

The whole course is poorly assembled. There appear to be missing lectures. One of the lectures refers to another lecture that does not exist in the course. The assignments are poorly defined. To complete the assignments outside research is required to learn about functions and concepts that are not taught in the course. In two of the quizes, answers are incorrect. The final exam has questions that have nothing to do with writing C code.

An example of a much better Coursera course for teaching style is "Python For Everyone". I can highly recommend that course. The material is presented in a practical manner, the lecture presentations are easy to read and follow along, and there are many opportunities to practice writing code.

By Deleted A

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Jul 8, 2021

I found this course hard to follow, the instructor is quite aged and while he was a very accomplished instructor and author of several books on the C and C++ programming languages he can be difficult to follow and the content very dry. It consists solely on video lectures and writing code with virtually no instruction or support.

The course is also structured on his book 'A Book on C' which was last published in 1998. There is no link to the book, no pdf of the book available and the book is ~$70 to purchase new. I was able to find a used one online for about $10 luckily but was still of little help. In addition this course does not cover any of the fundamentals of programming, it just goes straight into programming in C.

In addition, the discussion forum is of little value or use. On this platform there is peer reviews for your work and the discussion board is filled with people trying to circumvent the review process by getting others to review their code before submitting for review, it defeats the purpose and inundates the discussion board. When you do post up a real question there is virtual silence, no instructor, no one to help you so you feel totally left out and on your own.

It is a shame, I was really looking forward to this course and there are certain aspects I do like and I wish I did not have to drop the course, but paying $50 per month for a course I find myself falling further behind with zero support system is not a smart financial or educational investment.

By Patrick S

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Sep 3, 2022

i started taking this course because it was listed as a beginners course and i am fresh to the world of C. i was hopeing for bare bones elementary level step by step explanations and structure of how to read and make code, but there are some elements that arent well explained and you are suppost to already know.

it also doesnt help that when i write and correct the code which is deemed correct by what i see in peer reviews, teh compiler still gives me error messages, and theres no instruction involved on how to lear these warning errors. it may just be my compiler but i was told at the start of the course that visual studio was good, and yet i don't know how progress or if i have it right because i dont know the software. there was no explanation of this.

and we are coding things i havent seen at all covered in a lesson. code sine? didnt cover it in a lesson but im supposed to know what it is. i gather its a math term but if your not good at math or taking C for un math related purposes than you are gunna be very confused irritated.

By Darren K

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Jan 4, 2021

While it does teach the fundamentals as claimed, it's pretty lacking in quality. There are typos, poorly explained assignment prompts, and poorly formatted questions. One good thing about this course is that it goes into a bit more detail about the specifics of the language. However, it is not enough to make up for the lack in content quality as well as poor explanation of the more advanced concepts. Also, the course teaches C89, which can be helpful to know. However, it would be more helpful to teach more modern versions of C, and even then, this course does not clearly spell out the requirements of C89, which means that students do not properly learn the stricter syntax demanded by C89. Overall, this course is not one I would recommend for someone just entering the field of computer programming.

By Saptarshi B

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May 26, 2022

Prof. Pohl is obviously a very scholarly person and he knows his stuff. The lectures are also good if you can get past the handwritten stuff. As others mentioned, you need to listen to this at 2x speed. What makes this course poor are the following:

1. Not covering many important topics or covering key topics like pointers,makefile, memory managment very superficially.

2. Lack of many programming practice problems and no automated testing to really test your solution. So you do not learn much unless you practice elsewhere.

To contrast, the Dartmouth C course in Coursera seems to be better organized.

By Euan M

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Feb 11, 2024

There are far better courses out there for learning C. This one assumes that this is your first programming language, which is a terrible idea! The instructor is an awful teacher and beyond dull and uninspiring. Added to that several videos appear to be either missing or out of sequence. These problems only get worse in the second course where the material gets harder and the instructor is simply unable to clearly explain himself. Maybe UC Santa Cruz should consider someone other than a retired old professor to be their public face on Coursera?

By Deleted A

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Apr 14, 2021

I wish this was advertised or titles just a little differently. Im somoni who is very new to programming so i expected that we'd be starting out going over the fundamentals step by step. Unfortunately, around video 2-3 of the course, i was smacked in the face with some programs that the instructor made and...how am i supposed to take notes when i dont even know what im being shown on an even fundamental level. Maybe i misinterpreted the course wrong, but ill leave the review based on my experience for now.

By Austin Y

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May 24, 2020

while while early weeks of the course are good for genuine beginners, later weeks are really annoying due to assignments that have absolutely no background on how to code various required elements. if you are looking to code but be annoyed at the same time take this course. might as well teach yourself by using google just like how this course forces you to do anyway.

By Michel L

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Aug 9, 2023

The course material is ok, but the discussion forum is a ghost town and assignment instructions can be confusing. Also, the peer-graded assignment system is not the best option since the course has been launched in 2016 (first reviews in 2016). You need three persons to grade your work. I would give 4 stars if professor staff were involved in the forum.

By Supantha R

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Jul 21, 2020

I do not like this course.The instructions are not well enough for online course.The contents are not clear enough to understand.They should have made this course more user friendly.There must a different way for assessment.

By Ralph H

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Feb 2, 2022

The gap of skill level for the tasks is very high. First very easy and then you a task where you need some skills. The quality of the videos is better at some "youtube" tutorials which are for free.

By Nabil H

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Nov 19, 2022

For a beginner, the way of teaching was weak. It remembered me with the way old university professors teach. All sessions were boring, and the teacher's handwriting and tone are bad!