New Coursera course on Reactive Programming with Martin Odersky

[chris webster]

Coursera has just announced a new course with Scala creator Martin Odersky:

Principles of Reactive Programming follows on from Odersky's Principles of Functional Programming course and you are expected to have completed the FP course or have equivalent knowledge, including Scala. The course is presented by Odersky, Erik Meijer, who is well-known in the FP world, and Roland Kuhn of Typesafe. Based on my experience of the FP course, I'm expecting good things from this one, although it will probably be hard work.

Anyway, I reckon I know what I'll be doing with my weekends this autumn!

[Sean Corfield]

Already signed up!

I just finished the Introduction to Systematic Program Design Part 1 which is about to start over (September 4th) and I'd highly recommend that too if you're interested in functional programming: it uses functional subsets of Racket as the teaching languages. Disclosure: I'll be a Community TA second time around so I have a vested interest in the course!

[chris webster]

Great - see you back in Scala-land, Sean.

I started the Systematic Program Design back in June but had to drop out because of otehr commitments, but it looked really good. Not sure if I can manage it this September - maybe I'll just have to get the book instead. Good luck with the TA role.

[Tim Cooke]

Thanks for the links Chris. I haven't done the Principles of Functional Programming course so have signed myself up for that. Should be fun!

[Matthew Brown]

Cheers Chris.

I've signed up, but I am slightly ODing on MOOCs at the moment (got three on the go at the moment...which I told myself I wasn't going to do again after last time!).

[chris webster]

Apparently Typesafe are offering paid-for tutorials in parallel with the two Coursera courses.

Not sure how I feel about this. I can see why Typesafe might want to make some money and promote themselves via the courses partly developed by their own people. But it seems a little unfair on all the students who can't pay.

Still, we're each responsible for our own performance, so it's up to individuals to decide if they want to pay for extra help. As for me, I reckon I'll save the $400 and put it towards celebrating the (hopefully successful) completion of the course under my own steam.

[Sean Corfield]

chris webster wrote:Great - see you back in Scala-land, Sean.

I wouldn't say I'm "back" - I'm interested in the course more for reactive programming than Scala, and if I implement any of the techniques, I'll be doing it in Clojure. I'm also looking at Elm as an interesting client-side FRP language but again I'd be more likely to implement client-side FRP in ClojureScript. I will likely take the Functional Programming Scala course when that's offered again, but again more for refreshing the principles than the language.

[Joe San]

Even I registered for this course. Hope it will be as exciting as the previous one!

[chris webster]

You can warm up for the course with this video talk by Typesafe CTO Jonas Boner on the issues that Functional Reactive Programming tries to address.

[John Soper]

I'm struggling through the Scala class now (taking six other classes sure doesn't help). My plan is to sign up for reactive programming but not do the assignments, just archive things to study at my own pace. No offense to Prof Odersky but learning a new language and new concepts at the same time is a little rough.

[Matt Carkci]

You may want to also take a look at my video "Elements of Dataflow and Reactive Programming Systems" on YouTube for a quick intro. Reactive Programming is under the umbrella of Dataflow Programming.

[Sean Corfield]

Sean Corfield wrote:I wouldn't say I'm "back" - I'm interested in the course more for reactive programming than Scala, and if I implement any of the techniques, I'll be doing it in Clojure.

I signed up for the FP Scala course since it seemed to be a pre-req for the reactive course, but after a week and a half I decided that I find Scala too annoying to stay motivated so I un-enrolled. Given that Scala was my day job in 2009/2010, I was surprised that three years of Clojure have made me much less tolerant of Scala's fussiness than I was back then. I'm Community TA on two courses right now and have been away a lot at weekends, so on top of a full-time job, it was just too much to stick with a course I wasn't very motivated about... When it comes round again, if my workload is much lower, I may try again.

[chris webster]

Sean - are you still planning to do the new Scala course, or are you all Scala'd out for this year?

[Sean Corfield]

chris webster wrote:Sean - are you still planning to do the new Scala course, or are you all Scala'd out for this year?

I un-enrolled from the Reactive one as well, figuring that I really ought to do the FP one first, since my Scala is rusty after a three year break. I'll take both back to back at some point when I have more free time.

[Jesper de Jong]

How did you do with the week 2 exercises?

This was fun, it was about simulations and the exercises were about simulating circuits with logic gates and the spread of a disease. The latter one even had a GUI where you could see what was happening.