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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Functional Programming Principles in Scala by École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

4.8
stars
8,229 ratings

About the Course

Functional programming is becoming increasingly widespread in industry. This trend is driven by the adoption of Scala as the main programming language for many applications. Scala fuses functional and object-oriented programming in a practical package. It interoperates seamlessly with both Java and Javascript. Scala is the implementation language of many important frameworks, including Apache Spark, Kafka, and Akka. It provides the core infrastructure for sites such as Twitter, Netflix, Zalando, and also Coursera. In this course, you will discover the elements of the functional programming style and learn how to apply them usefully in your daily programming tasks, such as modeling business domains or implementing business logic. You will also develop a solid foundation for reasoning about functional programs, by touching upon proofs of invariants and the tracing of execution symbolically. The course is hands-on; most units introduce short programs that serve as illustrations of important concepts and invite you to play with them, modifying and improving them. The course is complemented by a series of programming projects as homework assignments. Recommended background: You should have at least one year of programming experience. Proficiency with Java or C# is ideal, but experience with other languages such as C/C++, Python, Javascript, or Ruby is also sufficient. You should have some background in mathematics (e.g., algebra, logic, proof by induction). Last, you should have some familiarity with using the command line....

Top reviews

RS

Oct 8, 2016

Really good explanation by the instructor. Good assignments. The assignments gave a good insights into functional programming. I loved the way the problems were decomposed into neat smaller functions.

VP

Sep 13, 2018

It took me much longer than expected to finish the course and sometimes it made me feel stupid and helpless. Diving into functional programming was a mind bending experience, totally worth time spent!

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1401 - 1425 of 1,611 Reviews for Functional Programming Principles in Scala

By Menno d B

Aug 3, 2020

The videos, especially the instructor, were very clear and very well-paced. The assignments were fun and challenging enough. The only improvement I could think of was the feedback provided by the auto-checking. Personally, I experienced trouble with this only in assignment 3.

By Marc V

Dec 14, 2017

Good introduction to Functional Programming concepts through scala.

It will be interesting review the practices with other students in order to see other way to solve the challenges.

Some of them put me at limit of my recursive programming.

I go ahead with the next course.

By Daniel W

Aug 22, 2020

Very precise and clear lectures with an emphasis on the structure of programs. I could only ask for a little more introduction to functional programming patterns for solving combinatorial problems, but working through the exercises will lead to that eventually anyway.

By Dimitri M

Jan 2, 2022

When I attended the first Scala MOOC on Coursera by Mr. Odersky, I loved Scala immediately but back then I had no experience in functional programming. Now, thanks to my React experience and my study of Pytohn, I can fully appreciate what Scala 3 has to offer.

By Oliver K

May 14, 2017

This is a really good course to learn functional programming in scala. I felt the homework assignments sometimes to hard, but this is likely due to my lack of functional programming experience. More advanced programmers would probably welcome these challenges.

By Ricardo C

Jun 11, 2016

Specially on the last exercise, there is a bit of a distance between the classes and the challenges. Other than that, the course provides a very good introduction to functional programming at the same time as it introduce the scala language constructs and api.

By Kevin T

Dec 18, 2016

El curso tiene muy buen contenido, y ejercicios que te ayudan acomprender las clases, sin embargo la estructura de las clases y ejercicios no es muy buena, pues algunos de los videos explican conceptos que se requerian para resolver alguna tarea anterior

By Claudio B

Jun 17, 2017

This has been a really useful course focused on functional programming. I now feel like I understand a lot more about functional programming. The exercises are sometimes not completely clear but otherwise a great course from the very inventor of Scala.

By John M

Feb 17, 2017

Not a gentle introduction. Often guilty of appropriating cool programming concepts for its own pedagogy, which often simply dilutes the core principles. Despite that - a generally well-structured course with thought-out (and challenging!) assignments.

By Sanket D

Feb 1, 2017

Loved the course. Got to learn from basic the concepts of functional programming languages.

Good pace. Awesome level of assignments. Had to good time thinking the solution of the assignments.

Great way to learn a new language, thanks to the instructor.

By Borja B A

Dec 3, 2016

Great teacher. With some issues. I found a little bit confusing the first week installing instructions with lots of data. But it improves.

Exercises are surprisingly elegant. Not easy but once you with the functional way of doing it simple.

By diego d

Aug 4, 2017

Muy apropiado si sabes los principios de la programación funcional y tienes claros conceptos de programación. No se hacen muchas aclaraciones ni de sintaxis ni de semántica así que lo mejor es acompañar el curso con un manual de Scala.

By Chi-Chun C

Aug 2, 2017

Somehow, it's not easy to solve the exercise.

It really train your brain as well as your Scala skill.

Overall, it is a good course.

If the exercise can have more guidance, such as where I can find the key concept , it will be better.

By Yiming H

Jun 5, 2020

I have no prior experience of Scala or Java. The structure and content are very good but IMO the difficulty of the assignments is pretty high - usually require significantly MORE time than expected to complete and pass the test.

By Anton P

Jun 10, 2016

Good materials and challenging programming exercises. Makes you think. However some material is old and some new, so little confusing. Especially when going through the materials about installing the development environment.

By Adam B

Apr 16, 2017

The course is generally very good and met most of my learning objectives, but some of the assignments, particularly the last assignment, are more difficult than I would expect for an introduction to functional programming.

By Matthew C

Jan 1, 2017

Well executed. The only difficulty that I had was when my assignments were not functioning well and had a hard time to understand what was wrong. A 10-minute video on tips on how to debug efficiently would have been great.

By Ankur D

Feb 22, 2018

I would suggest before explaining if there is a basic overview of the pure mathematical concepts and then relating those with the functional programming would enhance the quality of the course. Overall it is very good.

By Bai S

Aug 7, 2016

The content is great! But the rearrangement of lectures is not synced with intros at the beginning of some videos. I know it takes a lot of time and effort to make or alter a video. After all it doesn't affect much.

By Vatsal S

Dec 14, 2016

A fantastic introduction to Scala Programming from the creator of Scala. The assignments are well designed and really test your grasp of the concepts. A good learning experience from an astounding professor.

By Thiemo M

Oct 12, 2017

Excellent introduction into functional programming and Scala. It is pretty tough at first if you have no functional programming or Java background. But at the end of the course things started to make sense

By Maciej M

May 12, 2020

I like the difficulty level of the course, however I feel like some of the assignments contain material that is much harder than what was covered in the lectures and require much more time than suggested.

By Adam M

Aug 5, 2020

Excellent content and instruction. could be improved by providing practice exercises with solutions. Also peer participation is too low to be useful, and there is no instructor feedback in the forum.

By Robert K

Jun 12, 2018

I really liked the course. Prof. Martin Odersky has a real talent of discussing some entangled problems at hand. I liked the programming assignments. I look forward to the rest of the specialization.

By Juan S

Aug 10, 2018

The sound of several videos is very bad. But Martin Odersky explain very well the concepts, maybe one section less mathematical could be better. The good that i remmeber now , how made square roots