Udacity

Udacity is doing a phenomenal role in providing quality content from Tech Giants, making its students Industry Ready. The course curriculum, video contents are structured to make the students conformable with what they are learning and also make them upskill by working projects. The mentoring service is also very good where we get one-on-one mentorship, that too making these service available 24x7 since the mentors are from across the globe. The course contents are designed for everyone so that even an absolute beginner can learn easily. There are many courses that are specially designed for the beginner so that they get the concepts cleared from scratch.

I am Google India Scholar, pursued Android Developer Nanodegree. I had a very good mentorship where I will get my queries clarified within minutes, still, I could remember that the maximum time taken to reply was about 30 minutes. Being part of Udacity was not only this, but the community we had was very great. We had loads of interaction, discussions, and fun. The cool part was I made friends from all over India Just by being part of this community. I also a Python Foundation Nanodegree Graduate.

Now I am very confident in working with Android and also very comfortable learning new stuff on my own.

Udacity is the must go online course for me, to make myself Industry ready!

I have found the nanodegree to be highly helpful! I have finished the Basic Android Nanodegree and now going for Full Stack Developer. The video tutorials are split into sections and every section is compulsory for learning perspective. At the end of the section there is an assignment which challenges you to think and sometimes also do further research on the topic. The feedback on these assignments are excellent. It is just like the feedback given by the professors at the University. There is a mentor which is been allotted to all Who is there to guide and assist you at any stage. I would highly recommend doing the Nanodegrees.

While the course was able to sufficiently cover a range of lessons and provided what I needed to start with C++, it was obviously the first iteration of the course. I spent several weeks trying to get an environment that would compile my first project:

• Attempt #1: Tried using their online Environment. Both the Terminal and GUI environment had the wrong versions of dependencies and refused to compile my project. Because these environments would reset frequently, the online Environment was rendered useless, and I did not use it for the rest of the course.
• Attempt #2: Tried following their instructions to get dependencies and compiler setup for Windows. These instructions were very poor and involved very meticulous builds of each dependency. I could not get this to work, and with some research, I found none of the other students were using a Windows setup for compilation.
• Attempt #3: After looking into what other students were using, I finally got a Ubuntu (Linux) Virtual Machine setup on my Windows laptop, this worked, and was what I used for all projects.

Many other students had the same problems above. I stuck through the course since I needed to learn the content. Other than this specific set of problems, however, the course was satisfactory and I was allowed extended time to complete my Final Project.

The program is most illuminating and very benificial to someone who has some of the programming concepts. It guides the students step by step in a project based manner to consolidate their newly attained knowledge from the lessons presented by Udacity. I started working as a Backend Developer a couple of months after I took the degree and delivered the project I was working on perfectly, thanks to Udacitys lessons. I surely have reviewed some of the lessons whilst I was working as well. Not to mention how helpful the mentor assigned to me was and the added feature of the Student Hub that connects students of the same nanodegree together in a forum-like widget on the website which is really helpful, insightful and resourceful.

A little downside is that maybe some of the stuff at the curriculum may seem a bit outdated. Moreover, most companies and startups (as far as Web Development is concerned) prefer using JavaScript as their frontend and backend programming language. In Udacity's program, Python is used. It's not really much of a downside though, because you get the same concepts to work with, only the syntax and flow may change a little bit, but I would personally love if there was an extra backend JavaScript section in the program.

The Android Developer Nanodegree program empowered me with the necessary skills I need as an Android developer. As someone who was just getting into tech, I found the program really useful as it helped me get comfortable with learning a lot of new things.

The instructors were really helpful, taking out time to explain concepts, and giving adequate guidance. The course content is one I would describe as very rich, and it is also well organised. With quizzes and projects, I was able to put the lessons into practice, and I knew I was making progress. There were times I got frustrated, but the mentors, and fellow students in the student hub helped in such situations.

I would always recommend Udacity for anyone who needs to learn software development, because of the reasons I stated above, and most especially because Udacity is particular about following best practices.

The course was very introductional. If you want to learn more about Digital Marketing and know what are the main tools ans strategies, that's the right course. But if you are a digital marketing professional and want to increase your abilities, this course is not the best optional. Therefore, the help assistance of the Udacity is perfect. There's a community with studants and experts that help you all the time, and you can also help them. The best is the pratical projects. You really put your skills in practice and can use this as a portfolio later.