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!

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!

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

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.

I am a statistician who works primarily with R, with some Python for the things Python is better for. I know how to program, but I explicitly note I am not a computer science student. I have only limited experience with the command prompt. I was very excited when I heard about this course, but the amount of work and frustration just to get started programming in Scala has been obscene. I am very, very glad I decided to check out the course for free before paying for the specialization.

The course has a lot of required software. The tutorials to get this software often involve "You need this, but so save time we're going to skip showing you how to get it. If it doesn't work, you need to install it." There is a lot of variability in OSs. Many errors are often encountered. There is no help.

Among the things the course requires are two (three?) IDEs for Scala (I note the video tutorials says you just need some sort of IDE... but you need IntelliJ, and Eclipse to submit...). The guides show how to get started on a Mac. The software is not the same on Windows, and so 'step by step instructions' become a guessing game, because many options or menus are missing or different.

There are many better and more friendly guides on the internet. I may return to the transcripts of the course content here, but I won't be submitting any coursework. I'm going to warn my colleagues away as well. Forget Coursera - I'll just buy a book and work through it like everyone else I know.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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

Thank you! Professor Odersky. your course gave a new perspective of software development.

This one is tough (check the forums). Feels like a million bucks to go through with it. Sensei Odersky is the best!!

It is very good course for understanding the main scala principles and functional programming.

Прекрасный курс для начала функционального программирования на Scala

Great course, I have long time trying to learn Scala Functional Programming, and with the course I could do it

The course is well structured and intellectually stimulating, and provides a solid introduction to functional programming. Recommend it!

Extremely difficult, but by the end you will have mastered the fundamentals of Scala and Functional Programming.

A very good introduction to functional programming!

This was an excellent course - I learned a lot!

I am very happy part of learning this course.

Thanks for this great course.

Martin explained all the concepts clearly.

I learned a new language and more importantly, some new functional programming concepts!

Great presentation, challenging homework which makes it all worth it. Thank you !