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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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1426 - 1450 of 1,611 Reviews for Functional Programming Principles in Scala

By Donald L

Aug 13, 2017

Great introduction to the principles of functional programming! Easy to follow lectures. Assignments challenging at times! Important: It feels like the assignment for week 4 should be after week 5.

By Roger L

Aug 9, 2017

Kick-started me in Scala. I found the examples too Academic. Would have been much more interesting if the examples & exercises had been "real-world" & "tangible". Found the delivery rather dry.

By Denys N

Mar 15, 2020

I would prefer to have more practical tests that would challenge my skills in every area of studied subject, not generalized one for chapter (and even that generalized - not for every chapter)

By Leandro

Aug 25, 2020

very good introduction to Scala. Maybe I would have liked to see a bit what are the pros and cons (strictly speaking of the technical) with other popular languages such as java and python

By Kevin C

Jul 6, 2017

Good course but some exercises are not the best (especially week 4). Smaller exercises that directly test course material and having more frequent, spaced practice would have been better.

By Brad H

Oct 1, 2017

A very good introduction into FP, but there is much still to learn and explore. Same for Scala. The exercises were challenging but doable. Looking forward to doing more with Scala.

By Alessandro F

Nov 11, 2019

If the speaker was a bit more fluent in English, the course would be perfect. The transcritions should be reviewed too, but that's too much to ask for a course so complete!

By Patrick A C

Feb 12, 2018

The course was good generally, but the lectures didn't always cover material needed for homeworks. In particular, there wasn't enough lecture material about efficiency.

By Hao W

Feb 7, 2021

The assignment is relatively harder than expected. Extra efforts are needed to finish assignment especially for students who are a beginner for functional programming.

By Daniel F G O

Jul 8, 2019

It's a nice introductory course to functional programming. More than Scala is a functional programming course. It allows students to learn how to use immutable objects

By Mohamed A D

May 6, 2018

This course was a good introduction to functional programming. However, I am not giving all the stars because I think some of the assignments are slightly a bit hard.

By Jussi J

Nov 29, 2016

A good introduction by the creator of Scala himself. However I feel that this course is a condensed version of a longer course, so that is why I give 4/5 and not 5/5.

By Juan A A

Jan 1, 2018

The contents are great. Some assignments have the problem that all tests pass in the local machine that they don't work on the Coursera sever when they are submitted

By kieran s

Nov 14, 2017

Great course, but some exercises are very challenging for any beginners who wouldn't be motivated to push through. Still better than almost anything else out there!

By Nahum P

May 20, 2017

Gives you insight into different thinking in recursive way.

The major problem, that it doesn't allow people not used to recursive thinking to get into problems fast.

By Juha K

Nov 8, 2016

Great introduction to functional programming, and you'll get to learn the basics of Scala at the same time. Some of the assignments have a bit cryptic descriptions.

By Luye H

Sep 27, 2020

well around intro to scala and FP principle. nice to learn from the original author of scala with good breath and depth. However the assignment is quite difficult.

By felipe b h

Sep 3, 2019

Very good all in all. Seting up environment is a little bit difficult ans it makes beginning rather cumbersome, but then the clases and the material are excellent

By Jim R

Jul 4, 2017

Last assignment is insanely hard! And I think one of the unit tests used during grading takes order into account where it shouldn't (subtract assessment - assess)

By Romain G

Jun 27, 2017

I learned a lot in this course. Lots of it I knew, but now I feel I understand the basics better. Very well worth the time and efforts to complete this course.

By Facundo Y

Jul 19, 2021

All classes are very well explained and the excersises are very interesting to do. The only negative thing is sometimes the excess of theorical definitions.

By Mauro K L

Oct 14, 2019

Excelente curso, aprendi muito sobre programação funcional. Quem não tem muito conhecimento sobre Java pode ter um pouco de dificuldades em algumas etapas.

By Juraj V

Sep 29, 2017

Good introduction to scala principles. However some assignements are little bit hard, more concentrated on algorithms than scala itself. But I recommend.

By YACINE G

Nov 8, 2018

Very interesting course, and a pretty challenging one. I particularly loved how the nitty-gritties of the Scala programming languge have been presented.

By özgür a

Jun 24, 2017

Although the course lacks some details, I really appreciated it, especially the assignments emphasizing the coding format and testing. I learned a lot !