Python 3 Programming: Beginner to Pro Masterclass

I had to dive into the resources kit because they are structured different from one presented in the video, for example the Environment Testing - Sample Code was under this path "/4. Practical Projects in Python/0. Testing the Environment/" So the experience was not so smooth.

Overall: 3/5 Pros: A great introduction to python coding and jupyter notebook. Then the case studies and sections on machine learning provided a good overview of some of "what's possible". Cons: This course has not been properly updated since it was released. It took me *hours* to get everything installed, and once to the case studies and ML sections practically every single lesson contained code that was legacy/obsolete - didn't work. I had to work out how to fix the code: how to install alternate versions of packages, how to replace old versions of arguments and methods, etc. The sections on case studies and ML also didn't contain enough practical work for the student - watching others code isn't ideal. As a 'beginner/intro to python course' this was great, and is well worth the effort. The shear aggravation I had trying to make up for the obsolete code, and the lack of more involved examples is why this gets a 3/5.

Well done, but needs a little clean up. I had to supplement the material with a Python intro book to get it to stick in my head. Most of my programming experience has been with COBOL, dbase, and bash scripting. It was hard to get use to closing loops/conditionals with indentation. I wish you would have starting out with a crash course on what the colors mean when editing code.

I have a number of criticisms for the course. My first issue has to do with the Q&A section. I had some issues initially with installing openCV. The instructions that were given in the lectures did not work (they were likely outdated, understandable), so I posted a question and got no response for about 10 days. I eventually deleted the question because, through hours of trying out different solutions I found on google, I was able to finally solve the problem. On the final project (Happy Face detection using convolutional neural networks), it turned out that my Keras was not working. I was getting an error, even though I had followed the installation instructions. Again, this is understandable, as something likely changed from the time that the course was released. I looked through the Q&A for that particular lecture and found some people asking the same question but with no response from the tutor. I then looked through all the questions for all the lectures and saw that the tutor had not been responding to any questions for months. It is as if he abandoned his students. When it comes to the presentation of the instructor, Ryan, I was not impressed. His grammar was not very good and sounded unprofessional, fumbling around on the explanations a lot. Not only that, but his explanations for certain things weren't very helpful. I'm going to paraphrase here but an example would be when he was explaining scaling, and said something along the lines of "what do we mean by scaling? It means that, we want to take the image, and kind of, scale it". He does this a number times throughout the course, explaining a term, by just using the same term as the one he was trying to explain. It's as if he has no experience with presenting course material. The instructor in a number of instances, makes mistakes during the lecture, then cuts the video and begins again. If they are going to cut the video and then re-attempt, they shouldn't leave the cuts in there. Overall, poor editing. He periodically offers "challenges" at the end of lectures, but they are not helpful in the student's learning. The solutions to the challenges oftentimes require just changing some very obvious values in the code, which does not test student's knowledge in any meaningful way. To call this a "challenge" feels like an insult, like he's teaching to a group of kindergarden kids. Many of the projects also feel incomplete, with very inelegant solutions. In fact, many of the projects promised to be in the course, have yet to be uploaded, so there is a false advertisement on the number of projects available. Furthermore, many concepts in Python are not explored that I feel that every Python programmer should know about. For example, object oriented programming using classes, inheritance, etc, is not mentioned anywhere in the course. When I saw Hadelin and Kirill listed as the instructors for this course, I was excited because I love the way they teach from previous courses I have taken. I was disappointed to find out that they were not actually the instructors here. I have taken about 10 courses in total on Udemy, and this was the only one that disappointed me.