Startup Engineering

I heard praises about Coursera from a friend and a colleague who finished the Stanford’s course Introduction to Databases on the same platform. I thought to give it a try and after searching through it’s extensive list of courses, I found one that has drawn my attention. It was Startup Engineering, also from Stanford.

I was very eager to take it, and was a little bit disappointed when it was delayed, but in the end, it was worth waiting for! Every week was covered by video lessons as well as PDF transcripts. Often, PDF transcripts contained even more information than videos, with the links to all relevant additional reading resources.

We were learning about web development in general, node.js, git, linux command line, Amazon web services, but also a little bit about market research and chalenges that startups are facing. Course was graded 70% by answering multiple choices questions and 30% by programming assignments. There was also a final project, but it was not graded.

In my oppinion, the course succeded in providing additional knowledge and tips for experienced developers, as well as being completely available for junior ones. Big thanks to Stanford University, Coursera, and all the lecturers for providing all this for free to people all arround the world.