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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Pointers, Arrays, and Recursion by Duke University

4.4
stars
335 ratings

About the Course

The third course in the specialization Introduction to Programming in C introduces the programming constructs pointers, arrays, and recursion. Pointers provide control and flexibility when programming in C by giving you a way to refer to the location of other data. Arrays provide a way to bundle data by guaranteeing sequences of data are grouped together. Finally, recursive functions—functions that call themselves—provide an alternative to iteration that are very useful for implementing certain algorithms....

Top reviews

ZT

Jun 9, 2020

This course is certainly very challenging and I am glad I made it. To those who are still struggling with the poker game project, I encourage you to keep working hard and you will achieve a lot.

HP

Aug 18, 2020

Best part of the course the assignments and the poker project. I loved the reading part too. Best skill I got from this course is deep knowledge of debugging.

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51 - 75 of 90 Reviews for Pointers, Arrays, and Recursion

By Akhil P

Nov 16, 2018

Great course!!

By Егор О С

May 17, 2019

Great course

By bakre a

Dec 3, 2023

great

By Thắng Đ Đ

Feb 6, 2020

Great

By HITESH G

Jun 16, 2019

great

By G N R

Jun 6, 2020

good

By leekibeom

Jan 17, 2019

good

By Ahmed M m

Jan 3, 2021

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By Alan-Frank V

Jan 3, 2019

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By Joris

Jul 13, 2019

I think this is one of the best courses I've taken (and that's including the famous deeplearning.ai trajectory), because it is finally quite difficult, and covers even more advanced topics like function pointers. The best part is the fact that there is also some explanation on the hardware and memory, which make understanding the "why" of choices made more intuitive.

The order in which new information is added is spot on, and the assignment are relatively difficult and you really have to focus; tinkering your way through doesn't work (I was reminded of the saying: "Reading for half an hour, will save you two weeks of trying"

As a downside: I HATE emacs in this PPE environment; I'm used to sublime text, and all short-cuts/hotkeys are different. In addition, the ctrl-w, which is for copying (I think) closes the PPE tab, have resulted in lost code, and some cursing from my side.

However, all in all: great and I would recommend it to anyone interested in C programming (... or learning Emacs ;))

By Markis L G

Jun 22, 2022

First, let me say I was a C programmer 15 years ago with 8 years experience. I had forgotten MOST of what I had learned. So, I used this course to refresh my memory and learn some new things.

I think it is great. HOWEVER, I honestly think that the last two assignments especially the last one was too much and too big. I think they treated double pointers as same difficulty as assignment statements. I think they should have gone through a BIG real-life example of how to use double pointers instead of dumping us into the poker project (like learning to swim by pushing someone into the deep end).

The other problem is that we are billed per month or we purchased X months in advance and any messages we post are not being replied to timely. So, we have to wait days for a reply. This costs us money. Why can't they put a trigger which emails the person in charge and they can reply soon?

Otherwise, it is a GREAT course.

By Ming T

Nov 4, 2019

Learned a lot about pointers and arrays which I admittedly spaced out on in college. There was an assignment of recursion and how to efficiently use it, however it's use seemed somewhat limited in the final project. This would have been a five star, however the discussion forum response from the instructor team needs to be faster, especially since I'm 99% sure I'm reporting an error and the only staff response was not helpful (and no follow up!, bad business there, especially since the courses are paid, not expensive for American standards, but not all countries make American wages).

By Ryker E

Sep 9, 2023

I feel like everything seemed reasonable up until the final project second part. In fact, Coursera told me I had been doing well on several of the previous assignments. Supposedly the last part was only going to take 1 hour. Well it took me probably 6+ hours. I would say that there needed to be a little more instruction on the final assignment, or the time for the assignment should have been adjusted to something more like 3 hours. Either way, finally done!

By Jake S

Dec 30, 2019

I really enjoyed the instructors, I just think the course is not structured well for Coursera's weekly cadence. Learners who expect the time investment to stay the same week-to-week are in for a big surprise when the challenges come at the end of each course. It is as if you are asked to stack two bricks upon each other, then construct the empire state building. Hence the panicked learners in the forums. Thank goodness it is a flexible deadline course.

By Damien B

Mar 14, 2019

Very tricky. Much trickier than the earlier courses in the specialization. This is to be expected because pointers are slippery. My only complaint would be that the course needs more basic instruction in Git. I ran into some major issues with github and lost hours trying to fix them. Git is a great skills and should be included in the course, but I think we need a little more guidance.

By Fabrício B

Feb 2, 2019

The course itself is great. The grading system is a bit frustrating because you don't know what the actual tests are. Some idea of what they are actually testing would be a great learning experience.

By Afnan A

Sep 6, 2020

The project is difficult to complete. It would have been nice if they gave instructions in algorithmic style,

instead of giving subtle instruction.

By Jörn W

Sep 18, 2020

Nice course. However the last assignment is described in complicated manner.

By Vishal C

Apr 14, 2020

Only thing keeping this from 5 stars is the testing assignments

By Ujjwal A

Mar 3, 2020

upload more video so that it will easy to understand

By Leonid P

Oct 26, 2018

Good course, but some homeworks too hard.

By satyendra

Aug 26, 2020

Tool is confusing and very hard to use

By RHEA D

May 30, 2020

tough course but well taught

By SAPTARSHI D

Jul 25, 2019

nice course

By Deleted A

Feb 5, 2019

good one