I've completed the first four courses in this Specialization and I've decided against doing the Capstone. Most of the "most helpful" reviews confirmed what I feared by following this 4th module to the end.
I was really wary, having finished the third module pretty quickly, that the concepts in the lectures were simply become too broad and more about conceptual stuff and less about Python and learning to code. By the end of the Third module, you're basically just cutting and pasting pre-written code and making small tweaks to it. Not very helpful.
The fourth module "Using Databases" starts out with a GREAT lecture about classes and Object-Oriented Programming, which IMO should have been the focus of the whole module. The lecture left me with the feeling that there was so much more to learn about OOP and got me excited to start doing coding again.
However, it quickly segues into SQL and databases, which, OK, the SQL was interesting but the assignments once again started to be mostly cutting and pasting pre-written code. The first lecture on SQL was great, but I'm in the module to learn Python, not SQL. So you learn how to write SQL statements but the assignments are pre-written python programs where you tweak the SQL a bit... didn't really feel like I was learning anything new. I would have much rather done the SQL, then do a whole week on the conn.cursor and cur.execute stuff, learning how to actually write the python code. But there was a LOT of handwaving about this stuff.
The last assignment is literally running prewritten code and taking a screenshot of the result. Not even tweaking it! I mean-- how is that useful at all???
All in all I am glad I took the first four courses of the Specialization. It gave me a great overview of Python, and showed me I have a little knack for it and want to pursue it further. But I was very disappointed in how the course wrapped up. And hearing the Capstone was more of the same stuff I was worried about, I'm bowing out of it.
Anyway Dr. Chuck is great as a lecturer. I just wish the back half of the Specialization had been a little more focused.