I have tried Level 1 of this course. I read the materials provided and also watched the lecture video. All in all, the video is fine and acceptable. But the homework is kind of non-sense. Are you sure this is a course for a beginner? Why the homework requires so many knowledge that is not mentioned at all both in the video and the reading materials? For example, homework 1.3 requires the command scanf() and homework 1.4.1 requires getchar(). I couldn't find any of this command in the materials provided. I have tried my best to finish 1.3 by searching around online but right now I have no idea how to start the homework 1.4.1.
Did I miss some material to learn this course? If NOT, I would say this is not a really good course for a beginner and I am not going to pay for the remain level.
You can't expect to learn programming from a single source. There are countless functions in the standard library for example, just type std:: and scroll down, you will see what I mean. As you can imagine is nearly impossible to include them all and analyse them in the course material, and in my opinion is out of the scope of this course. It's something that you can google and instantly find it in a matter of seconds. Hence, it's not optimal to dig in in so much detail all the time, but to focus on more important concepts.
The point here is to learn programming with FE applications and in my experience this course teaches you stuff that other online or even university courses, don't even bother (boost libraries, templates, not to mention ready to use algorithms for quant finance in level 9). I agree this course is rigorous and quite demanding (50% success rate), and absolutely not for every one. I was a newbie when I started, it took me 66 days to complete it, but I used every kind of sourse I could access: online, books, even youtube lectures and tutorial videos, just to take another point of view and get the bigger picture. Forums were quite useful as well. And although I completed the course, I keep googling and reading more and more, cause it's basically endless.
I believe people who take this certificate aim to work in the industry, and in case some one is a complete beginner needs to try harder to deal with what is expected. You are going to need much more anyway in a real interview, and that takes personal research and self studying for sure. Here is a great way to start since this certificate is quite famous and respected, and is designed to provide you with whatever is necessary for a future career.
If you aim to work in the industry or enter an MFE program I would strongly recommend to give it another try - do level 2 as well - and then decide if it's actually for you or not
