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Functional Programming Principles in Scala with Martin Odersky

coursera.org

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Re: Functional Programming Principles in Scala with Martin Odersky

#3

Post by austinz »

ch4s3 wrote: post #2

I would love to hear from someone who took (and completed) this class with no prior experience in Scala or FP.

I fit your criteria. I really enjoyed this class; I felt like there was a good balance between Scala-specific features and conventions, and a more general overview of the functional programming way of thinking. The programming assignments were surprisingly involved for an online class.

Since I can't learn anything from lectures unless I force myself to pay attention by taking detailed notes, I took detailed notes. You can find them at the link below, although I make no guarantees about their correctness. (Note that they may also spoil the answers to some of the impromptu in-lecture quizzes.)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Uk54kbCIKUx8eX2vJsX591ss...

Re: Functional Programming Principles in Scala with Martin Odersky

#4

Post by platz »

ch4s3 wrote: post #2

I would love to hear from someone who took (and completed) this class with no prior experience in Scala or FP.

I took this class and enjoyed it; it was my first experience with scala, but I had previously taken grossman's programming languages course which introduce me to FP (https://www.coursera.org/course/proglang).

Actually I thought grossman's was better at giving a comparison of FP and OO and hit on some more of the theory in FP (for example, odersky doesn't talk about the expression problem, but grossman did).

There will still be a lot in scala that's confusing after taking this class, but it's trying to teach the concepts rather than the language details.

That being said, I really enjoyed it and would recommend it.

Scala is an interesting blend of FP and OO. Just be aware that the ML-style languages (or even a lisp e.g. Racket) really feel more like FP. The blend is what makes it a mind-expanding course.

Re: Functional Programming Principles in Scala with Martin Odersky

#5

Post by thothamon »

ch4s3 wrote: post #2

I would love to hear from someone who took (and completed) this class with no prior experience in Scala or FP.

I also fit your criteria. I learned a lot, however I would say I didn't really "get" functional programming until after reading some more books and taking a different course that emphasized functional programming. In this course, I was trying to write imperative programs just as much as I could. However, without this course as a foundation, I doubt my other reading (and the other course I took) would have been as valuable.

Re: Functional Programming Principles in Scala with Martin Odersky

#6

Post by chowells »

ch4s3 wrote: post #2

I would love to hear from someone who took (and completed) this class with no prior experience in Scala or FP.

I wasn't a fan of the course. For context, I've got a lot of experience in FP, but no experience in Scala. I took the course hoping to learn Scala.

The course didn't teach me Scala. I suppose if I was an FP beginner, I would have learned something, but not much. It had about the same depth in FP as my college Programming Languages course, except that course also covered a ton of other topics.

Part of how dissatisfied I was is because I took the course immediately after Dan Boneh's cryptography course, in which I learned a ton. I was very disappointed how little content was actually in the course.

Re: Functional Programming Principles in Scala with Martin Odersky

#8

Post by eweise »

chowells wrote: post #6
ch4s3 wrote: post #2

I would love to hear from someone who took (and completed) this class with no prior experience in Scala or FP.

I wasn't a fan of the course. For context, I've got a lot of experience in FP, but no experience in Scala. I took the course hoping to learn Scala. The course didn't teach me Scala. I suppose if I was an FP beginner, I would have learned something, but not much. It had about the same depth in FP as my college Programming Languages course, except that course also covered a ton of other topics. Part of how dissatisfied…

There was very little content or you already knew fp so you didn't learn much?

Re: Functional Programming Principles in Scala with Martin Odersky

#9

Post by the_af »

chowells wrote: post #6
ch4s3 wrote: post #2

I would love to hear from someone who took (and completed) this class with no prior experience in Scala or FP.

I wasn't a fan of the course. For context, I've got a lot of experience in FP, but no experience in Scala. I took the course hoping to learn Scala. The course didn't teach me Scala. I suppose if I was an FP beginner, I would have learned something, but not much. It had about the same depth in FP as my college Programming Languages course, except that course also covered a ton of other topics. Part of how dissatisfied…

The title of the course is "Functional Programming Principles in Scala". To me this indicates the focus is FP principles, and Scala is the tool used. The FP content they teach is very good for an introductory course, in my opinion.

If you took the course and read the forums, you probably noticed a LOT of people really struggled with the FP part. Imagine if it also added more in-depth Scala features...

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