By Afref Fetter 5 months ago Completed

Prior experience in the field: Partial completion of the same course on CourseRa.

Like:
Armando Fox is a great lecturer - very enthusiastic and engaging.

Get to learn a little Ruby - which is a great language.

Got to learn a few things about Rails.

Dislike:
David Patterson was not as enthusiastic or knowledgeable as Armando.

The course feels very rushed, with Ruby, etc. being given even lesser time than in the CourseRa offering.

The evaluations (quizzes) don't really test anything (vague questions on theory).

The other evaluative components (HW), which were like programming projects, accepted faulty code for the right answer (except HW1, which was a great intro to Ruby).

A lot of stuff was just skimmed over or not covered at all.

Suggested improvements:
Go slower and deeper into the various topics.

Cut out the bucketloads of theory (intro) in the first lecture.

Teach us how to build a software from scratch - the programming assignments had a lot of code already written.

By Gavin Conran from Portadown 7 months ago Completed

This was a fast paced and challenging course. The biggest hurdle was learning enough Ruby and Rails to get the best from the agile based RSpec and Cucumber tools. Once this course is successfully completed you can transfer the agile techniques learnt to other languages such as Java and Python.

By Pascal Labbe 2 months ago Completed

This is more a software engineering course than a Saas course. The Saas specific content is very limited. Despite that I still learned a lot of interesting things.
For an experience programmer, the course is easy but time demanding unless you already know Ruby and Rails.
Homeworks could be more interesting. The book is poor but nonetheless essential if your want to answer the quizzes.

By Mashimo from Munich 2 months ago Completed

This was my first Coursera course and I quite liked it.
Plus: very high quality, no big errors, material is great and interesting, the topics are absolutely relevant (SaaS itself, BDD, TDD, Ruby on Rails, legacy code), and Armando is entertaining. I actually enjoyed both the theory and the practical part. HW1 was great, much netter than the other HWs.
Minus: very dense and fast paced, a lot of stuff is compressed in 6 weeks; you really need to bring programming skills as pre-requisite and willing to learn Ruby on the side (if you don't know it already, I didn't and costed many hours); David is a bit monotone when speaking and not so easy to follow (some words get lost); some quiz questions were strange or questionable.

All in all, a very good experience.

By Pathe SENE from Dakar, Dakar 5 months ago Completed

A not to miss course if you want to get the big picture about ruby on rails. I also take the second version an now i feel more mature and take time to test every line of code i write.

By Lucas Arruda 5 months ago Completed

I was surprised with this course, in terms of how hard they push in quality!

Possible if you have little CS knowledge, this course is gonna be tough.

Not only they teach SaaS in a deep, but you will learn a lot about Ruby internals and some extent of Rails. Also, those not familiars with TDD and testing in general (Rspec, Cucumber/Capybara), will learn a lot.

I would definitely recommend this course. It was probably better than half non-online subjects I did.

By Jeremy Barth from San Francisco, California 5 months ago Completed

I took this when it was on Coursera, but I think it's supposed to be the same content. Really great content and a decent pace. The homework is challenging but doable (although I have a lot of previous development experience).

I recommend watching the lectures at about 1.5x speed (not sure if edX let's you do that).

By Kenny Chan 5 months ago Completed (Partially)

Great way to see all the way through the creation of a web app. Best if you have prior programming experience, though Ruby experience is not necessary.

By Robert Komartin from Bucharest, Bucuresti 6 months ago Completed

Really excellent - to me it was the refresher I needed regarding the last two decades of software engineering progress! I will be impatiently waiting for the sequel!

By Bharat Krishna from Seattle, Washington 7 months ago Completed

Very challenging & enjoyable course. The programming assignments were awesome. Topics covered are very useful for the modern day.

By Jeanne Boyarsky from New York 8 months ago Completed

Even before the class started, it was apparent the class was really about software engineering practices using Ruby. It seemed like a cool way to learn a little Ruby and tools like Cucumber.

The main pre-req was knowledge of at least one object oriented programming language. The videos were a bit jumpy but still possible to follow. I felt like there was too much overlap between the lectures and the book.

Quizzes were short multiple choices to make sure you understood the lecture. I think the homeworks were by far the best part of course. They were well crafted to reinforce/try/play with the material. They gave you a sandbox that was big enough to play in but not so big as to flounder around in. The exams were timed multiple choice quizzes.

The home page had announcements. Kind of. Most things were “announced” in the forums or by editing a paragraphs long text area. Only a few announcements had a date. The announcements had a feel of the plans were “on display” in the basement of the planning office, where both the lights and stairs had been removed, in an old filing cabinet locked in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard.”Yes. They were there. But it took a lot of looking and re-looking to ascertain what was new.Source: Hitchhiker Guide“.

For a comparison with the circuits class, see http://www.selikoff.net/2012/04/07/coursera-saas-class-and-mitx-circuits-class-feedback/