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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Programming Fundamentals by Duke University

4.7
stars
6,733 ratings

About the Course

Programming is an increasingly important skill, whether you aspire to a career in software development, or in other fields. This course is the first in the specialization Introduction to Programming in C, but its lessons extend to any language you might want to learn. This is because programming is fundamentally about figuring out how to solve a class of problems and writing the algorithm, a clear set of steps to solve any problem in its class. This course will introduce you to a powerful problem-solving process—the Seven Steps—which you can use to solve any programming problem. In this course, you will learn how to develop an algorithm, then progress to reading code and understanding how programming concepts relate to algorithms....

Top reviews

ER

Aug 13, 2020

The instruction provided in this course are very clear and anyone who can learn coding by this course. But the course has more readable content for you to take notes and reading it may take more time.

SP

Apr 23, 2020

Whether you are new to programming or an experienced guy, you should absolutely opt for this course because it helps to build a strong base with the basic but most important concepts in programming.

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26 - 50 of 1,730 Reviews for Programming Fundamentals

By fengkeyleaf

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Jun 27, 2019

Great Courses! I've learned a more general way to write an algorithm, rather than starting coding right away! This is very helpful in the future study~

By SUJOY N

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Apr 1, 2019

Teaching Team is really good. I have got a great experience to complete to complete this course.

Thanks to Coursera.

By Amrita A

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Sep 26, 2019

As a beginner this course was very helpful to understand the basic concepts of C programming language .

By Michiel V

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Jun 23, 2019

For beginner programmers, this course is certainly advisable. However, the price (50+ euro per week(!)) is disproportionate to the amount of video time the teachers make available. If I wanted to READ about C, I would buy a book on C. The strength of coursera are the tips and tricks and the connection between listening and reading. Compare this course for example with the (cheaper) machine learning course of Andrew Ng which would be worth this price, but this course definetely not ... Hope the follow-up courses will be better.

By Yi-Shiun, C

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Jan 23, 2019

the design of assignment is not as clear or as good as what in Udacity.

By Harith U

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Jun 25, 2019

The course was extremely easy to follow (It helped that I had some programming background, using loops and conditional statements, but the course taught me a lot of new stuff). I learnt how variables are stored in memory for different datatypes, how to use struct and typedef, etc. I would recommend this course for anyone looking to start learning the fundamentals of programming.

By Suraj S

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Jul 13, 2020

This course has been wonderful for me. This course did boost my confidence in learning programming and introduced me to a new era of language learning. The tutors were great and I thank them too.

By Ca

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Aug 5, 2021

Professors taught very detailed, especially how to program step by step, I'm not novice for coding but learned a lot from it, it's not being taught in my previous education.

By Rashad J

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Aug 25, 2021

In my opinion here videos, teaching, studing , teaching structure over internet very comfortable and help to develop students for reaching best result in time!

By Ming T

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Jul 25, 2019

Very beginner level, however it was good review and brought important concepts that I never picked up when first learning programming in college.

By Sahil T

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Dec 11, 2018

Very useful if you are new to programming in general and want to learn C in particular.

By waleed

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Apr 2, 2019

Loved the way they visualize the code, very helpful and easy to understand.

By Jimmy K A

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Nov 11, 2018

Really Excellent course. Fully understandable and very useful.

By Shashank S

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Sep 3, 2019

The course was amazing and I learned a lot through it.

By Diego d S B

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May 15, 2021

Very good course to create logical thinking

By anjunshao

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Sep 17, 2019

Very good course for beginners to learn.

By Jones L

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Oct 14, 2022

Very good introductory course

By Sandipan K

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Mar 25, 2019

Really helpful for beginners

By vivek j

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Apr 7, 2019

A decent and a basic course

By Carla C O P

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Jan 27, 2019

It made me happy! :)

By Raunak R

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Mar 26, 2019

Awesome Course

By NIKHIL S

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Jul 2, 2020

Well, as per the description of this course, it is fundamental to programming and any novice could attend it but I tend to differ from this opinion. It's my recommendation that any novice must gather information regarding things discussed in this course as it will be helpful during practice quizzes of this course.

Above all, it is really serving its purpose of strengthening your programming fundamentals but for that, you must already have some fundamentals to get strengthen.

Also if you opt for this course make yourself sure to also opt for all other courses of this specialization. After completion of this specialization, you will have a lot of new skills for sure including Linux and UNIX.

As this specialization is not a cakewalk so you must have to remain motivated throughout.

Also, lots of stuff to read makes it irritating.

FUN LEARNING

THANK YOU!

By Elizabeth T

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Oct 25, 2020

The first two weeks of modules were helpful and provided a useful foundation for better understanding programming as a true beginner.

The third week didn't contain a good balance of readings and video examples. Most of the material consisted of readings that seemingly aimed for a breadth of coverage rather than meaningful engagement with some fundamentals that would enhance a beginner's understanding.

Week 4 materials were not helpful for completing the task. Thinking of an algorithm in terms of the steps involved in making a peanut butter sandwich doesn't translate to taking real information and thinking about what it would take to represent that information as an algorithm. I would have had more appreciation for establishing a better grasp of sorting algorithms than taking a shot in the dark as to what this might look like.

The presenters/instructors provided helpful information, but the highly scripted delivery was somewhat unsettling as a viewer. I would prefer the authentic "ahs" and "ums" to extremely stiff/scripted delivery as the former makes this closer to the experience of actual classroom instruction.

By Benjamin H

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Dec 9, 2019

There was a lot of reading and the reading covered concepts that can be pretty hard to grasp for non-programmers. I recommend the course authors add more videos walking through those concepts and make the readings less dense at some points. I just did UPenn's Computational Thinking course before this one and I think they are a good example for how to improve production quality and delivery. I know it's a programming class but I think the UI/UX of this course could be improved. Having said all that I liked the deliberate approach, taking things slowly. Other C tutorials online jump straight to advanced concepts but this course focuses on getting a good grasp of the basics so you can have a good foundation going forward.

By Yunus E

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Sep 7, 2020

I think this is a real good course. However, as we all know being a beginner of programmer is hard. So, we had many documents to read. It is ok but videos are very efficient but kind of short. I learned many things from videos but documents were kind hard to read and understand. Also, In my opinion, these documents would be better if they place after the videos. Because we had no idea about this new world and starting with good videos could be better then starting with complicated documents. But as I said videos were very beneficial.