Swift & Firebase Building an impressive Realtime Drawing app

Overall, very good. The APIs and version of Swift are out of date, but it's not to tough to figure out what the new methods and patterns are.

The topic is interesting, the technologies used are exciting (Firebase, Swift) the author is knowledgeable but the course is VERY slow and wildly disorganized. I think the course was originally written for Parse because the author mentions it occasionally. I think this could could have been condensed down to 2.5 hours. Every time the author refactors the code, I get more and more confused. Also, Firebase and xCode have both updated their products so this course could use an update to Swift 3.0 and the new Firebase console.

I hope I can provide an honest feedback being that I am disappointed in this lecture and can deliver constructive criticism so you can improve as an instructor. The positives: 1. The topic is interesting as I have a project in mind that requires drawing. That's why I signed up in the first place. 2. Icaro seems to be knowledgable in Swift and he is using advanced structures in the code. 3. Using mBaaS, such as Firebase is a useful skill to learn, as it is relatively new to me. 4. Icaro is very responsive and would answer all of the questions promptly. Where improvements need to happen: 1. The lecture videos are VERY confusing. They don't seem to follow any particular logical order nor they are complete. I contacted Icaro because there were obviously missing videos as he re-shot them. Codes were changed or lines were added without being on the videos and as a result, my codes don't work when following the videos. 2. While Icaro seems like a good coder and he knows what he is doing, he needs to significantly improve to become a good teacher. Half of the verbal explanations were incomprehensible and I don't understand what he is trying to say. He needs to be a lot more clear and concise in his communication. A lot of his sentences either make no sense or use vague terms, like “this thing” or “something strange will happen”. For example, there were times when Icaro would put up his fingers on the video and say "we need to do that to this, this and this. You know what I'm saying?" I don't know what he is saying or referring to. I just do not understand his speeches. Downloading the code is clearer to learn from compared with his lectures. 3. Being that it is an online lecture, the presentation needs to be effective. There is no purpose in the head camera shot, in fact, it has been very distracting and impeding the lecture. There are many times where the head camera shot would be zoomed in to the middle of the screen covering the Xcode window and it completely covered up the very codes that he is trying to explain. I suggest that you do not include the head shot unless you need to show something useful. I would also suggest that you include either a powerpoint presentation or animation to explain your codes to make it clear. 4. Be better prepared. I believe this is the most important part that makes this particular Udemy lesson ill-conceived. It was apparent that the Icaro was not well prepared for his lectures. Half of the time, he wasn't sure what he was going to say, stumbling for words then made comments that were incomprehensible, wasn't sure what to type on the screen, back and forth with deleting or moving blocks of codes around. At the end of the short course, there is a note “Sorry guys it seems that you have been learning farster that we have been teaching... more material still to come we will let you know as soon as it is available.” This is disappointing. The course was published before it was completed. On top of that, being that English is not his primary language, which is perfectly fine, it is even more crucial to be prepared for the lesson recording. Writing a script will be nice. Watching the videos before they are posted would be helpful in getting an idea what the audience sees. I am sorry for the harsh review but Udemy should not have published this incomplete and incomprehensible course.

What the instructor lacks in oral presentation, he more then makes up with knowledge and insight. Ive been coding swift for about a year and all of the little details he shows makes me feel like I know nothing. . Extremely happy I bought this course.