I had high hopes for this course based on the previous feedback here but with the latest revamp it has totally missed the mark. In current state, this course consists of recycled material and projects from the "Androd Basics from Compose" course that is FREELY available off the Android Developer's site. The Canvas modules are nothing more that direct links to sections of this course with supplemental videos of the instructor basically summarizing what the section will cover - zero value add. For the homework, you are asked to build a scaled down version of the assignments in the Android course, again a zero effort approach that calls into question the price tag on this course. The final assignment was a total joy as the available starter code examples on the Android site were outdated, causing folks to have all sorts of problems with outdated depdendencies, etc. This topic of course was conveniently not covered in the Canvas module and students were left to troubelshoot via Ed Discussion. To add insult to injury, the Developer's course content is dry, highly dense, confusing and consists of fragmented code examples that are hard to follow. This is easily among the top 3 worst courses I have taken I have taken in this program.

Submitted Sun Sep 17 2023

If you’re interested in revisiting OOP and learning Kotlin, then this may be the class for you. The lessons could have been a bit better as I did not enjoy the codelabs that much. Unfortunately the codelab docs are sometimes wrong. For example in some of the later codelabs, I ran into issues where my results didn’t match theirs. Turns out it's just Google that has a few typos or issues in their codelabs. Be sure to check out the repos for reported issues by other users if something seems off. With the codelabs units taking 10 and sometimes 20+ hours a week to get through, I’d skip the professors videos since they’re just overviews of the codelabs. Assignments are based on some of the practice codelabs without solutions with very minor tweaks. Final is worth 30% of your grade and was open notes so it wasn't bad at all.

Submitted Mon Aug 21 2023

I took the Summer 2023 revamp in Kotlin. Let me save you $2k - https://developer.android.com/courses/android-basics-compose/course. This is the course. Literally each course module is a link to the next section of the Google Android Dev course. There is zero original content, except for the projects which are watered down versions of the linked courses projects. The overall Google course is average to bad, with average to difficult projects. Prepare for an overload of information. Just remember this is an elective course so try to have fun and really only put as much effort into the material as the quizes, final, and projects require. Unless you stick with Android dev, you'll likely never touch any of this again. For the OSU quizzes and final, the questions are poorly worded and can be out of date as the Jetpack Compose framework gets updated often. Our class had two quizzes re-graded due to outdated info, I also had a third quiz re-graded as a I gave evidence from the documentation that the quiz questions were outdated as of a month prior. I would not suggest taking this course unless you need an elective to graduate and this is the only offering that you find interesting. It's a real shame since the pre-revamp course was highly regarded as one of the best courses.

Submitted Mon Aug 21 2023

Actually go through Flutter docs thoroughly, they're very helpful. The textbook is okay early on for overall concepts, but as the complexity of code samples increases the more things have been changed in the Flutter language so its applicability declines. The walkthrough videos are fantastic.

Submitted Fri Mar 24 2023

Best class in the program by far (i've taken all but one pre-req and one elective / parallel was my other elec). Jong's many weekly videos function as class notes and are very engaging and instructive, and absolutely help you become a better programmer, irrespective of the language used. Disregard the fact that Flutter is used for this class (~40% mobile dev does) and realize that Jong's depth of knowledge and industry know-how will build your foundational programming skills for any language far better than any prereq course or elective in this program (it's clear he's worked in mobile dev as his advice shows it). Of the 5 projects only proj 4 is difficult requiring a significant investment of time using his videos. Project 5 is imminently more natural and less time consuming because you're familiar with the layout basics introduced from proj 4 and the previous projects. Roughly speaking I'd say about half of what you learn is Flutter specific, while the other half is general coding tricks and techniques. It's a shame the other classes don't have a professor who is as skilled (and eager) at showing but not telling the answer as Jong is. Yes this class is a lot of work; again especially with project 4, but you'll be that much more prepared working professionally and writing efficient code (even if you don't go into mobile dev). The TA's and professor were very helpful when you inevitably run into a problem, and the final, while open-note was quite difficult in parts. You'd be a fool to miss this class, as varied (and usually low quality) as the other electives are in the program.

Submitted Thu Mar 23 2023

My favorite course in the program. The videos are absolutely top notch, the professor who recorded them I believe is the on-campus capstone prof now. Yes there's some annoyance with changes to flutter (null-safety), and some other packages or libraries have changed, and the widget on widget on widget hell can be annoying at times...but don't let that get in the way of taking a good course. Most of the major issues due to changes have a leading note in the module or updated files available. Flutter docs themselves also leave a bit to be desired, I think Google spent all it's money making fancy videos instead of making their docs better. Projects 1-3 are pretty easy, Project 4 is the toughest, and Project 5 in-between. Final was open notes/modules, but still decently tough. Some of the answers were buried in videos, so not easy to control F. No midterm for the summer, not sure if that's standard for the regular terms. Weekly quizzes with the two lowest scores dropped. This class definitely made me a better programmer.

Submitted Tue Aug 09 2022

This is one of the better courses in the program in that the learning material is detailed, engaging, and pragmatic. The summer term instructor would not open assignments early so we had exactly two weeks to read/watch the learning material, do a quiz or two, and complete a project. This felt overwhelming at first, but two weeks was enough time to get everything done. One down side to this class is that the final is 30% of your final grade. Despite it being open book/notes, many answers were not in the learning materials or previous quizzes, nor were they easy to google. It required you to have a more conceptual understanding of the learning material but as a result the final felt more subjective and like the questions were meant to trick you.

Submitted Tue Aug 09 2022

The course material is now out of date. There were some major changes to dart/flutter that makes this class somewhat painful now. Flutter is an annoying nested widget pyramid of a framework. The projects take a surprising amount of time considering how little you are actually accomplishing in them. I can do the same things in Xcode/Swift in like 1/4th the time after taking a Udemy course. I would recommend skipping this elective and doing one of the excellent online native iOS/Android courses or React Native and using your elective on something better.

Submitted Mon Mar 21 2022

Start the last two projects early, especially project 4. You will likely need some help from TAs and office hours get busy during the 2nd week. I also recommend reading about the project requirements BEFORE you start reading and watching the exploration videos for the module. A lot of your project code will be shown and discussed during the videos and this will allow you to begin coding your project as you work through the module. Other than the difficulty, HIGHLY recommended class. Even if you don't have plans for mobile development in the future it helped me to understand streaming and asynchronous coding (reactive programming) so much better.

Submitted Mon Mar 21 2022

This class uses Android Studio, Dart language and Flutter. The videos are great but are outdated so you spend a good amount of time trying to figure out the updated way to code the examples. Another detail is that Windows 11 and Android Studio are still trying to make friends so there might be issues when loading the emulator. All assignments require a video demonstrating your project. My emulator was so incredibly slow that it took me hours if not days to get a 3 min video completed. It was stressful and frustrating as I spent much more time troubleshooting the emulator settings, restarting, opening Task Manager, reading stackoverflow on how to improve emulator performance, etc than actually learning the class. Besides these technical issues, is overall a good class.

Submitted Mon Mar 21 2022