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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Parallel programming by École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

4.4
stars
1,835 ratings

About the Course

With every smartphone and computer now boasting multiple processors, the use of functional ideas to facilitate parallel programming is becoming increasingly widespread. In this course, you'll learn the fundamentals of parallel programming, from task parallelism to data parallelism. In particular, you'll see how many familiar ideas from functional programming map perfectly to to the data parallel paradigm. We'll start the nuts and bolts how to effectively parallelize familiar collections operations, and we'll build up to parallel collections, a production-ready data parallel collections library available in the Scala standard library. Throughout, we'll apply these concepts through several hands-on examples that analyze real-world data, such as popular algorithms like k-means clustering. Learning Outcomes. By the end of this course you will be able to: - reason about task and data parallel programs, - express common algorithms in a functional style and solve them in parallel, - competently microbenchmark parallel code, - write programs that effectively use parallel collections to achieve performance Recommended background: You should have at least one year programming experience. Proficiency with Java or C# is ideal, but experience with other languages such as C/C++, Python, Javascript or Ruby is also sufficient. You should have some familiarity using the command line. This course is intended to be taken after Functional Program Design in Scala: https://www.coursera.org/learn/progfun2....

Top reviews

AL

Apr 23, 2018

The course is fairly advanced and you would need to review the materials many times to understand the concept. The assignments are definitely fun and not as straightforward as other courses.

RC

Aug 24, 2017

Superb study material. Learnt a lot during this course. I am not much into mathematical stuff, but got a hang of how to break problems and improve efficiency through parallelism.

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176 - 200 of 273 Reviews for Parallel programming

By Kaushik N

Aug 7, 2016

The course was really good. Got to learn so much about parallel programming with that course. The explanation level is very basic and any Computer Science related person can easily grasp the concepts

By Jean-Baptiste D

May 21, 2020

At its begining, this training doesn't look as polished and refined as the previous ones animated by Martin Odersky, but it quickly catch up with very efficient lessons and great practice exercises.

By Martin K

Jun 22, 2016

Very good. Only things I wish were better is more comments in some assignments and more prepared tests. Also I miss not having "Statement of Accomplishment" like some other Scala courses :-(.

By Steve N

Jul 5, 2020

I really learned to think of parallelism in different ways. My only issue was that a lot of the exercises required good spatial skills which are not my strength. Somehow though I passed.

By Yihan S

May 17, 2017

The assignment could be optimized and avoid to be more academic since it may make student lost focus and spend too much time on the question itself rather than the parallel programming

By Rodrigo D

Apr 1, 2017

Its a very good course! perhaps the in the practice code, before jumping into the problems they can provide a couple of simple examples/questions such that the main ideas are learnt.

By Du L

Jun 2, 2018

Very challenging course, the assignments are more about practising using parallel programming, would be better to design an assignment to implement the parallel programming.

By Gregory E

Mar 29, 2018

For this course you should have Advanced English level. Cause sentesce construction is so difficult and words so unusual that i had to some times google what i have to do.

By Benoit T P

Dec 20, 2016

Very good course overall on the basics of parallel programming in scala. Would have been nice to talk a bit more on the low level setup (parallel and task construct code).

By Tim G

Oct 22, 2017

Really good course covering some of the fundamentals of parallel programming, though for me I was hoping it would go into some of the Scala specifics a little more

By Erkin Ü

Oct 7, 2016

Assignments are focused on problem-solving rather than the importance of parallelism, missing the point of the lecture. It is a Scala course, so it is always fun!

By Rahul W

Dec 11, 2016

Good course but scala understanding is required for this course. So please register for prior course in the certification task to easily complete this course.

By Роман В

Jun 2, 2018

Assignments are too easy compared to 2 previous courses. I've been asked lot less than been given. And did not grasp everything in the lectures at the end.

By Solodovnikov G

Sep 17, 2016

Good explanations, relevant assignments.

But too small, too little graded assignments as for subject. Be better if the assignments has less starter code.

By Zhenduo D

Nov 14, 2017

I can be further improved if the class can touch on design patterns using Future and Actor, in addition to the data structure oriented materials.

By Enrique G R

Aug 19, 2017

Time to complete exercises might not be completely assessed. Some lectures seem to technical without any correspondence with real problems.

By Pascal A

Sep 23, 2016

Really a great course but with a heavy work for the duration. If others courses are followed in parallel, there's no time to loose

By Romain G

Jul 28, 2017

Very good course. Conc-list was brilliant.

Automated correction tool could do with more verbosity on failed test cases.

By Steven T

Sep 26, 2016

Presentations were presented well and the assignments were interestingly varied but quite challenging for the newbie.

By Alan A

Oct 6, 2019

Interesting course but math part is too academic and boring. It'll be more useful if focused only in real use cases.

By Ville M

Jun 22, 2020

After a rather confusing and dissatisfying first week, the course picked up pace nicely in the latter weeks.

By joshua

Jun 9, 2017

Overall the course was really good. I think the first 2 courses explained things a little bit better though.

By Carlos C B

Apr 6, 2017

The course is good but is not focused on scala features. It is more generic parallel programming approach.

By Adianto W

Oct 24, 2016

Insightful, though I am not sure if in non R&D/Academia settings the knowledge here can easily be applied.

By Marc K

Apr 9, 2018

The homework assignments are a bit hard, they require a lot of concentration time to make some progress.