I find this course to be too academic. It's difficult enough to wrap your head around a new language and paradigme, there is no need to complicate things by using mathematical exercises and assignments. I'm sure this could have been done using much more common use cases and examples.

The course was quite good all in all, and even though I'm already experienced with many of the aspects involved in software engineering in general and in functional programming in particular, I've followed it with much interest and gained some new perspectives. And it's been a great introduction to Scala (a language I had not written code in before).

The teaching is very good! Prof Odersky's explanations are very clear and go into the right level of detail, and the exercises and assignments are interesting and seem to be well thought out.

I personally would have liked the course to be deeper, both in explaining functional programming (e.g. the monad pattern) and in covering more advanced features of Scala (e.g. the less trivial parts of the type system), but I guess the given course is OK as an introduction and I can also go look for the stuff I'm missing in other courses and/or outside Coursera.

Two minor things that damaged the experience to a little extent and which I would recommend to improve for the future: 1. The technical introduction was good enough to get me started, but did not cover some problematic aspects which had me stuck for a long while (it was also very difficult to solve by googling, and a colleague of mine - who's also taking the course - ended up solving it by chance). Specifically I'm talking about worksheets not working properly unless created within a package directory, and for some things unless set to a certain mode of execution (non-REPL). Disclosure: I haven't looked for solutions in the course forums; it's possible that this was asked and answered, or that I could have asked and gotten an answer there. 2. The videos were poorly edited: some bits repeated, some clips were obviously recorded for a specific week number but then given in another week, some parts had obviously been there originally (and other parts referred to them) but then they didn't make the final cut... It's a pity that an otherwise very well made course suffers from such small technical problems, which, while not too grave, cause confusion and increase the mental load the learner has to cope with - which is already laden with challenging stuff - with such non-important and easily avoidable distractions.

Thank you!

The course in general is kind of theoretical. Some of the homeworks are fairly challenging. I found it a useful companion to the Programming in Scala book, which I'm working through at the moment.

Really well explained, with thoughtful examples and labs that make your brain actually comprehend all the lessons.

Generally excellent! Reading around other online introductory resources the difference in clarity from the creator of the language, Martin Odersky in this course is very clear. I feel I have a good base to continue my learning from. To make it even better as an introduction I would have liked 3 things. Firstly more examples and exercises. along with the more challenging ones, more correct vs incorrect examples exercises, to reinforce the theoretical understanding that is so clearly present. This would translate more quickly into practical coding skills. Secondly some more tips on the development environment, specifically how to get the debugging tools working. Lastly, updating the code base to the lastest versions of Scala and SBT, so there are no deprecation warnings when building. Having said all that, I'm really happy to have found this course and excited now I've completed it to continue my learning of Scala.

Very interesting course, it totally changes your mindset from imperative programming. Basically it teaches you to think in terms of recursion instead of loops. Although some assignments can be difficult (and take several hours), they are helpful to understand the concepts and challenging as well so they keep you engaged to the course. Besides, the lectures are very clear and designed to give some hints on the assignments. Since Scala is based in Java, previous knowledge of Java is an advantage, but not a must. However, previous programming knowledge is a must in my opinion.

All in all, a very recommendable course to take.

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.

This course helped me significantly. There is very little in the way of AFFORDABLE Scala Education out there. This is a problem. There are endless educational resources for Python. Scala has a lot to offer programmers if only they knew where to find adequate educational Resources for Scala.

Make learning Scala easy enough for a 12 year old to learn and you will see it explode.

Make Scala, Easy ! Make Scala, Fun ! This is essential to opening the young minds interested in Computer Programming.

Also!

Why isn't there a native Graphic Scala Lib like Python's Tkinter?

Not everybody wants to be a "Big Data" Mining Engineer.

If Scala can produce graphics from the Java Swing library and experimental ScalaFX graphics lib, then isn't it time for Scala to have it's own native Graphic Library that is at the least as capable as Tkinter for Python.

There is no better feeling than the liberating emotion you get from creating programs, games and Apps on your own PC. Let the Power of Scala out.

Make it easy enough for Kids to learn and get out of the way!

This is a remarkable course in which the creator of the Scala programming language not only teaches the language but also offers deep insights into the theory of programming and computer science.

Good explanations, but gets difficult fast! Several videos I had to watch multiple times.

Excellent course

The course develops the concepts of functional programming from scratch. With fun and challenging programming assignments, it gives ample opportunity to wrap your head around the alternate paradigm.

Great course for introduction to functional programming

The Course was superbbb.

It was a good introduction to Scala for me. The video are precise and concise. The assignment are made for you to apply the concepts seen in the videos, but they remain challenging and fun to do!

A lot of fun, and though taking this course for review, I came upon a number of explanations that deepened my prior understanding of concepts and techniques.

This is my very first course on Coursera and thanks to their scholarship Program which make me enable to learning from world top faculty in the field of Computer Science. It is like a dream comes true and you will surely feel like you are physically taking the lecture at EPCL ( École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne / Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne). I would highly recommend this course even if you know nothing about functional programming like me. Keep in mind that the instructor of this course is the designer of the Scala language and who would be the best teacher other than the designer itself. Additionally, EPCL is world's top 22 and 8 in general and computer science subject ranking by QS Top Universities 2019.

Bit chaotic at the start. Later some nice functional programming paradigms and scala internals.

Even though i took a version of this course back in 2013 outside the (later introduced) Scala specialization the course material did not loose its relevance and i very much enjoyed solving the assignments with an evolved functional mindset. Another big plus: Martin Odersky's lecturing style is very clean and comprehensive :)

Excellent introduction to functionnal programming

great course. strongly recommended for software engineers who want to have good fundamentals about functional programming

I learned a lot

This course can crack you brain and it is awesome!

Great course to understand the fundamental principles of scala

Good way to learn by doing - assignments extend lectures and give additonal approach to deal with the all programming issues.