I have loved the courses in this sequence so far, but this one really frustrated me. In general, this course is a huge jump up in difficulty from the previous courses. This manifests itself in several ways that jointly make the course very hard: (1) a speedup in pacing, (2) videos that provide examples that are much easier than the exercises, (3) exercises that presuppose things that are not explained in the videos, and (4) the autograder gives insufficient feedback in many cases.

The introduction of linked lists happens very quickly, with very little explanation as to why linked lists are important and the advantages of using them. The early lessons are super easy, but they rapidly progress to doing complicated things with linked lists. In order to do this, you have to be extremely comfortable with pointers on a level that I don't think is reasonable given the short time since they were introduced. By the end of week 3, the lessons involve writing functions to help you write more complicated functions to sort and search through linked lists. I think sorting and searching algorithms are important, but they are pretty complex and introduce a lot of moving parts when you are just trying to get comfortable with linked lists. Previous courses in the sequence had exercises that focused on one thing at a time, which helped make the progression smoother and allowed us to build confidence. I think that if you are going to do sorting/searching algorithms, they should get standalone treatment, and not be shoehorned into the linked list unit.

The amount of code on the screen is enormous compared to previous exercises. In the exercises leading up to the course, I never had to write more than a few lines of code to complete them. By the end of this course, the exercises were pushing 150 lines of code for me. That's a huge jump in complexity, and you can really feel the clunky aspects of Codecast when the programs get this large.

There was one exercise that required you to write a function to copy a string from one place to another, with no clear explanation as to why this was needed to complete the exercise. The lesson before it didn't involve strings, so watching it didn't help. This is a needless complication.

And then there's the issue of the autograder. I don't want to be unfair because I know that autograders are annoying in every programming course (other C courses have similar issues), but it is so frustrating to submit code, have the grader reject it, and then get no feedback as to what is wrong. It is entirely possible to write a program that will compile correctly, produce the correct output, and still have the autograder reject it. There are forum posts of people posting screenshots of the outputs matching the "correct" answers and the autograder shows no output. This will waste a lot of time and just drive you absolutely insane.

If a few of these issues could be improved and the pacing of the course were spread more evenly, I think it could be so much better.

I was very impressed with the quality of C Programming: Advanced Data Types. The teachers [Petra Bonfert-Taylor and Rémi Sharrock] are incredibly competent. The didactic material together with the learning environment are fantastic. Unfortunately, we have no way of controlling the speed of the videos and, in some moments, this would be more useful than going back in time. Even so, I am pleased to be able to complete the fifth course of the Specialization Program. Many thanks, Coursera, Dartmouth College, Institut Mines-Télécom and not least the Patrick and Lina Drahi Foundation, for democratizing quality education.

I just finished taking this course and I have to say that it was an excellent learning experience. The instructor was knowledgeable and engaging, and the material covered was comprehensive and in-depth. I feel much more confident in my understanding of advanced data types in C as a result of taking this course, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is looking to deepen their knowledge of C programming

This course helped me understand the basic concept of Linked lists. The graphic representation made during the videos shows how the pointer of the head of the list is very crucial and must not be lost.

Great course to apply all the knowledge in pointers and memory managment, I hope they update this part of the certificate to include stacks and queues.

The course was amazing, all the lectures were easily understandable and codecast was the best tool I ever used for learning.

Pointers are a challenge and this course does a really good job of visualizing dancing through memory.

one of the best course in c programming, the codecast memory visualization is really helpful

You will learn something valuable if you really participate.

wonderful visualizations! it helps so much

Pointers applied. Very well explained.

very insightful!

THANKS

well done

The video content in combination with the coding tool were not working very well.

Reporting of bugs were not taken serious.

In some parts of the specialization courses I could not follow and reproduce the tutor topics, because the tools which were considered for educative purposes, have flaws in functionality.

The idea of the heap visualization is great, if the interactive tool would provide it's fluent function.

E.g. a video in which the tutor is coding runs every other lesson to teach you about memory allocation.

In the browser window where the code frame is implemented, a visualization tries to show the data in memory at the same time.

When you pause the sequence, in order to observe and follow the heap or function or any other topic and continue the lecture video, the visualization, the code and the speaker are not synchronized anymore.

This behavior occurs steadily over the whole specialization course parts, not allowing you to use the tool, for what it is meant to be used.7

In the first three parts of the specialization, Mrs. Bonfert-Taylor and Mr. Sharrok are so sure of themselves and the tool, that it is frustrating on the other side of the table, not being able to follow their excitement.

Reviews of other peers seem to indicate similar experiences about technical issues.

In the part 6 of the specialization the weblinux does not do what it is promised to deliver.

I have run three different browsers on two different PCs, which show the same result of bugs.

In part 7 of the specialization, the activity tasks do not load at all, also with three different browsers and this time on the different PCs.

Feedback is not taken very serious, not even talking about support or fixing.

I am really very sorry, but I would not recommend this specialization taking all relevant point into consideration.

A big jump from the previous courses as far as difficulty. The biggest problem for me though is the grader. I spent almost two weeks trying to submit my work that was working on my end but failing on their end. Got contacted by staff when I post the problem in the forum and so I submitted my code as they requested but they never responded again. I would highly avoid this course as they seem to be having problems with their grader and staff may or may not help you and is just going to frustrate you.

Annoying, code, that is delivered and it is only expected to fulfill one function is buggy. You can't change it, because it's forbidden in the task. Sorry, but it's prepared.

The examples used on this course are very confusing, especially in week three, I didn't understand anything.