Bad and frustrating interface....

Not enough Instructions

I enrolled to this course with very high expectations as to the fact that I can learn the C language, but I was disappointed when I got know that the teacher(s) were in fact teaching things which were basically IQ tests. There were some parts in the teachings that were logically "broken" as well.

The teacher(s) seemed to "show off" by making very simple things extremely complex. Mind you, this course is for beginners, but you can't even pass certain assignments if you don't even have at least a slight bit of knowledge of the C language. If you were planning on learning everything from scratch, I think this course would be useless and you should look elsewhere.

Therefore, I have decided to not participate in this course due to those matters.

This course is a mess. It tries to teach everything and as a consequence only scratches the surface of most topics. Anyone familiar with programming in another language will be bored out if their minds and beginners will probably be completely overwhelmed. C also isn't a good language for beginners, the language is very unforgiving. There also are some errors and very bad advice in this course. I've worked long enough as python programmer to know, that the "industry advice" in this course comes from people who never worked outside of an academic setting. One of the instructors also never blinks in any of the videos and that was creeping me out.

Too many of the assignments are "guesswork". I know if you have a methodical approach it is not guesswork. But this is now how you look for bugs, this is not how you would write tests. This is just forcing users to write lines and lines of examples without actually debugging the code. Looking at forum posts, responses from staff are not as quick as one would expect. Also there is too heavy of a focus on emacs. Nevermind the editor, use the actual terminal instead which is accessible to everyone, especially since vim is also an available editor in the environment.

I intended to take the whole specialization and I got through the first two courses when I decided that continuing is pointless. My goal was to become more proficient in C programming. Instead there was relatively little code to be written and I spent most of my time on black box testing. If I wanted a course in black box testing, that is what I would looked for. Even though I completed the first two courses, I consider them a waste of time and effort. I do not recommend them.

So disappointed in this class/specialization. The tools (programming environment) is buggy, slow, and a pain to use. Instruction is lacking in content and clarity. Had to waste massive amounts of time googling and looking up explanations on discussion boards.

I've taken over 50 Coursera courses, and this is the first specialization I quit because I just couldn't keep putting more effort into taking the course than the instructors put into making it.

Really bad course. Assignment are poorly explained, you spend more time deducting what is required than getting things done. Practice exercises requires yo to know a lot more than what is explained in the theory classes. Completing practical exercises for debugging and testing is a nightmare and provides no lessons to be applied in real life. A very poor course overall, I would not recommend it to anyone.

The grading program was horrible. I follow the instruction, make a mistake, reload the webpage, and now I couldn't emacs back to the file I just read to fix it. It keeps saying emacs is running, but when I press fg, it say bash:...... Fix this thing.

good basics but the terminal environment sometimes stuck after I use it for a while, so annoying and wasting time. I need to refresh my browser again and again. can you just offer basic online editor that works like other website? thank u

instructors are not good. Can't even complete the first assignment 2nd course because there are no clear instructions (written). Some instructors just read and don't explain properly. too fast

The things you use for the course do not even work half the time which makes you frustrated. For exampe, 1 time in a week the application to do the assignments would work.

The use of emacs is extremely frustrating and time-consuming. The content that is akin to something I learned in my 7th grade computer science class. Would not recommend.

I followde all steps of the teacher to do the first programming test, but the system doesn't let me pass. The compiler of this system is awful.

Can't even do the first assignment. Check out the discussion forum...so many complaints and the only response is look at the FAQs.

ITS NOT LETTING ME FINISH MY ASSIGNMENT AS THE PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENT CREATED BU DUKE UNIVERSITY IS NOT ALLOWING ME TO PROCEED

You're going to waste so much time on the last project that you risk dropping the course because the work is too complicated

Unable to complete PPE, I spend hours of my time still unable to complete it.

isnt working properly and do not have enough details about following course.

Worst course ever. The programming environment doesn't work at all

No practice problems or solutions in free version. quite dull

I have completed the course but certificate not generated.

We should change the quiz system it's very bad

v bad experience ! too vague !

awful