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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Java Programming: Solving Problems with Software by Duke University

4.6
stars
7,850 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

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.

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.

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1451 - 1475 of 1,613 Reviews for Java Programming: Solving Problems with Software

By Franko M

Nov 10, 2022

Good for getting your hands on some code with real world applications, but does not get into any detailed object oriented programming. For example, you are not taught member variables, private methods, etc. You are just told to make all methods public and not question what other options there are. It is good at teaching basic "coding thought process", but doesn't teach much in terms of language capabilities.

Each week doesn't really build on the previous. The whole course is just different examples of using their 7-step process for programming and problem solving.

By Mikolaj U

Dec 24, 2023

I used this as a refresher course after a few years of no coding, and it was alright. With no experience, this would be quite hard - a few concepts are not explained in videos but required for the quizzes. Creating methods to reduce copy pasting code should have been emphasized and practiced more, as by the last week it becomes quite important - your code will need it, but I was confused how to go about it. The instructors are great and very competent, but it would be good to review and update the course, to ensure it's easier to follow.

By Felipe M

Jan 26, 2018

It is a nice course for people who are just starting to program to feel the power of writing software for solving real world problems. The assignments posted are challenging enough and shed light on some of the reasoning necessary to write working software. But it does not encourage to create custom methods to help keep the code clean, sometimes solving some of the assignments following the instructions led to many 'for' and 'if' nests which made the code difficult to read and boring to write.

By Abhigyan

Aug 2, 2021

This Course is all about problem solving. This won't teach you JAVA in depth rather how to solve problems with language. If you are a beginner it would be on a little bit of the difficult side. I would recommend you learn a little bit of java first and write some programs on your own beforehand. This will make things easier. In the end, I would say that this course indeed helps a beginner to understand how problem solving works, so you can go with it.

By Rasika V

Aug 28, 2017

It starts off well, but week 2 is ridiculously rough. After getting past that, I struggled with the Miniproject, because, again, it was structured poorly. I had a number of software problems with FileResource and BlueJ, and of course, the mentors were never available to help. While I eventually was able to finish the course, I would've appreciated more guidance. I really enjoyed Course 1, but this was a waste of time and money.

By Ruilong J

Sep 27, 2017

Some of the important details are missing when i try to do the quiz. For example, when i am trying to do the assignment i do not know how to iterate over all the data files because neither the videos nor the reading info gave me the answer i need so i have to google it. However, i still learn a lot from this course, too. Great classes to take and sometimes it gets a little bit tricky.

By Jose U

Jan 12, 2017

The content was useful and I do feel a foundation is being set.

The area where I think the course fell short is on the support we got from mentors or instructors in the forum, basically null - pun intended. There are some points where it's easy to fall into a rabbit hole, like I did. Without support, a simple challenge supposed to take a few minutes can turn into hours, days.

By Syed M S

Oct 13, 2020

5 years outdated and the use of a third party library made by Duke University is not ideal. We should learn libraries that are in the original Java API, not third party libraries that can not be reused in our professional coding career. Also, the assignments may be to difficult for beginners but even if you some experience of C language you will do great.

By Rohit B k

Jun 5, 2020

I dint like the software used for the entire program. The theory should have been told in rather good way. prof. Rodger was good at coding. she coded step by step and practically. the other prof who use to code was just running up like hell. But i was good experience to be a part of Michigan University.

By Mikhail K

Dec 9, 2018

It started fine, but then turned out it's a somewhat weird course. First of all, who uses Oracle Java IDE in the middle of 2010th? Secondly, the course doesn't really follow the OOP and Functional programming guidelines. Overall it's worth it if you are a complete newbie

By Tshepo M

May 2, 2021

The course is okay for beginners who are ready to devote more time and energy in supplementing with other materials outside the course. The BlueJ app involves too many steps to getting code output where else you can just click run and get results in other IDEs.

By Abhijit R

Jun 29, 2020

I really dont need this course. I just wanted to take a free trial for 7 days and i checked that it i was charged 76 for a month. I really need a refund. It's only been one day after my trial ended. Please leave me a reply. Email: aroy3452@gmail.com

By Daniel G

Feb 3, 2024

Good beginner course. While the problems are very straight forward, I felt that they could be quite tedious at times. As an engineer working long hours every day, I felt that the pace was pretty hard to keep up with since I work such long hours

By Khadidja A

Sep 22, 2020

I consider this course of medium quality in terms of teaching style (somewhat narrative-like), the difficulty of assignments (lots of repetitive code writing - not very challenging), and student engagement (I feel lots of code was given out).

By Devul N

Jul 23, 2017

This course was overall a good course and taught me a lot of things, but the discussion page wasn't that helpful, as the questions were not being answered regularly. It is for this reason i am giving this course 3 out of 5 stars.

By Pooja S

Jul 5, 2020

The course focuses on the logic behind programming and the assignments are very helpful to exercise what we have learnt. It would be more helpful if the course focuses on the syntax of Java programming also.

By Ravi S

Dec 12, 2020

Course is more focused on using already provided packages. And also course should be designed for most popular IDE like eclipse, so that beginner get introduced to tools which is widely used in industry.

By Derrick B

Nov 2, 2021

I'm disappointed this isn't a true beginner course.

Please note you are 10000% expected to know basics of Java or you will be loss. I was trying to use this as a refresher, and it still didn't work.

By Mr W

Jun 29, 2020

People must have general idea about the Data types/class/methods/objects/libraries. So, the course is somewhere between beginner & intermediate. But anyway, the instructors explained well!

By Noran H

Sep 16, 2019

Not for a beginner level at all , The estimated times for the exercises is so much less than the required the exercises require hours ,, week 2 is difficult and require alot of time:|

By Singh A A M

Sep 9, 2020

I am using eclipse to perform my java coding and this whole course was on bluej. So I was having some issue because of some built in method in the CSV section. Rest all was 5 star :)

By Peter L

Mar 24, 2019

Why must we be forced to use BlueJ? Also, from explanation to problems the learning curve is slightly steep. Would be better with more practical walkthrough coding examples first.

By Erdem O

Feb 6, 2018

The content is good but they use the 3rd party Java libraries, not the standard one so It makes it pretty much useless as you don't get to learn anything in Java programming.

By Manigandan S

Sep 22, 2019

This course is definitely not for beginners. But people with little knowledge on JAVA or coding of any other language will find this useful. Assignments are really helpful

By Shankaranarayanan K R

Sep 4, 2016

More technical aspects could have been touched upon. Details on how to implement code on any java platform using inbuilt java libraries and several others.