As other reviewers have noted, this course is NOT for beginning programmers! (Unless maybe you are a mathematical genius with total recall.)I have a little background in programming, HTML and CSS, but I found this course to be an absolute nightmare. It would be interesting to find out if any of the rave reviews came from real beginners.Most of the problems have already been noted by other reviews, so I will only mention a few that I did not see mentioned.The course requirements should include hardware and software essentials. In particular, the student has no choice but to use Android Studio. If their system is not running a 64bit OS at 2.4 GHz with at least 8 GB of RAM, it can literally take DAYS for Studio to complete the build so that the student can do anything with assignment code.There is a desperate need for a glossary. The course dives in with more acronyms than the military, and assumes the attmpting learner already has a handle on APIs, SDKs, etc., not to mention many other technical terms (interfaces, ...). If I asked the average programmer to evaluate the MT based on comparisons with the Complutensian Polyglot and Codex Alexandricus, the effect would probably be about the same.Another glaring omission for beginners is a battery of exercises for each concept/skill.As for Weve organized all these topics into units that represent roughly 4-6 hours of work each, that is absurd! If you multiplied that by 10, it would still be a stretch.I have no doubt about the programming and technical competence of the instructors (though there are some errors in a number of the instructions). And Im sure they are very nice people who really want others to learn. The root problem seems to be what professional communicators call The Curse of Knowledge -- a syndrome in which a person is so familiar with their subject that they cannot begin to imagine what it is like for someone who is not.My recommendation to a beginner is to look somewhere else. Take a good introductory course in Java before diving into the vastly more complex world of the Android environment. I am not qualified to evaluate the course from the perspective of an experienced programmer, but I have noted that they are frustrated by clutter caused by token attempts to make this a beginner course.My recommendation to the faculty is to completely re-engineer this whole specialization. They should have a separate set of courses truly designed for beginners, and they should get help from qualified instructional designers who specialize in online adult education. (Might not be a bad idea to get the VU English department to review the lecture text as well.)My recommendation to anyone is to never believe anything Coursera tells you about a course. Audit the course BEFORE you pay any money! This is especially important if the course has not actually started. This course started two months late, and I could not get a refund before the course even got under way!After taking nearly 6 months to wade through a little over half the course requirements, I decided to look at the rest of the assignments and project. This removed all doubt that to continue was a hopeless waste of time. So, I decided to end the nightmare, and Im glad its over!
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