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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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51 - 75 of 1,611 Reviews for Functional Programming Principles in Scala

By Aneesh D

Sep 23, 2017

A great course. Functional programming really is a different way of thinking about programming and this course does justice to all of its core concepts. The assignments are very well structured and teach all the best practices of the paradigm.

By Pritam B

Sep 28, 2016

I have never worked with Scala before. But this course has not only given me, basic level introduction but also taught me advanced concepts and how to apply those concepts in real world problems.

By Antonio L

Nov 25, 2020

Very challenging course, it really made me think about programming in a new way, excellent materials and Odersky's style is very pleasant. I recommend this course, but it is a real challenge.

By Kushal C

Aug 28, 2020

An excellent introduction to concepts of scala and FP, diving deep when needed. Instructor is awesome

By Bogdan P

Aug 4, 2019

It's brilliant in rewiring a mind from OOP to functional thinking.

By Vinay D

Nov 20, 2020

The course material is pretty good for beginners of scala. Some of the concepts needs a bit more of elaboration or reference in the course.

By Ivan P

Jun 29, 2019

The course was awesome, but some tasks(llike huffman encoding) are really hardcore. Also, there are not that much information on implicits

By Santiago N

Apr 5, 2020

Good course and well structured but oriented to advanced programming levels and requires more time than estimated in the course.

If you are a computer science student this course is perfect but it will take a lot of time since the practices are demanding. If you are working this course may be too demanding in time and effort to be devoted to after a working day.

Apart from these considerations, the contents and videos are well structured and organized, although for a first foray into scala, which is a very powerful language, I do not recommend it.

Regards.

By Terence S

May 26, 2021

Mixed feelings.... The course seems to have been a bit botched upon several updates as the material is almost 10 years old. Assignments and video lectures feel out of order and the assignments demand that you spend more time trying to understand the arbitrary problem presented rather than teaching you Scala or function programming. I don't feel that I've benefited greatly from going through this course because the material was too focused on staying theoretical while explaining a concept, nor do I feel I have any great understanding of Scala now.

By Denis P

Nov 19, 2016

1) quite academic assignments which are hard from the 1st one and are very far from regular programmer's job

2) very quiet voice/record made it really-really hard to listen the course in subway/metro

By Paola G

May 13, 2018

Define better objectives: Functional Programming principals versus Scala Syntax. Mixing the two leads to comfusing/incomplete content on both sides

By Sahil E

Aug 16, 2017

Not a very good lecturer, things explained during the videos hardly feature in the test. Always felt unprepared from Week 1

By Russ H

Nov 5, 2016

It was Ok. I would have liked to learn a bit more about monads / monoids etc and I found the final week a bit disconnected.

By Robbie C

Feb 26, 2018

I found it assumed too much knowledge, and found the order/structure of the course to be suboptimal.

By Eric L

Oct 4, 2016

Good material, but the lecture format was very dry and composed primarily of long videos.

By Pavel D

Nov 19, 2017

Very boring. Too much about OPP in FP course. A lot of important FP concept are skipped.

By Héctor P A

Sep 4, 2016

This course was splitted in order to get more money, and we know it

By Cheslyn A

Nov 28, 2017

a bit difficult to grasp if you dont have the background knowledge

By Munaf S

Jul 1, 2018

good technical level. Material could have been more engaging.

By Federico A G C

Jun 30, 2018

Not self-contained if you are new to functional programming

By Gustavo S

Dec 16, 2017

Decent Intro - some parts require external research.

By Rain

Dec 1, 2019

It's not easy to learn the whole course.

By Indian E

Jun 28, 2017

Examples are too hard

By Mironescu M

Feb 19, 2018

very hard

By dd3334

Jun 27, 2018

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