C++ Online Programming Course Testimonials

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The following are some recent testimonials by students who completed the "C++ Programming for Financial Engineering" online course. Many of our graduates are active on this forum and ready for the next step on their career (joining MFE programs). If you have questions, ask here and they are more than willing to answer.

The course provided a great outline of what a programmer can do with C++. The topic areas are brief, to the point, and distributed into 9 levels. Each level has video lectures, homework assignments, and its own forum for students to ask questions. The instructor conducted a precise walk-through on each lecture, again, brief and to the point. My assigned TA was tremendous in given feedback and pointing me in the right direction.
I enjoyed this course and the challenging assignments. I now feel much more comfortable with C++, than before I took the course. In my opinion though, one without prior programming experience may find this course on the very difficult side. If that's the case, I would suggest making good use of the forums in each level. Your hard work would certainly be rewarded later on.
Completed 1/23/12.

I was really impressed with the quality of this course. It managed to cover a whole lot of material. The only way to learn how to program is by doing lots of programming, and learning from your mistakes. The homeworks at each level make sure you get in a lot of practice. Feedback from TA/forum helps you learn from your (and other people's) mistakes.

My TA (Avi) was very responsive, usually getting back to me in a few hours.
Completed 4/11/12.

I thoroughly enjoyed the course and found the material both insightful and compelling. My TA, Vadim Nagaev, was a great resource and provided me with top-quality help.
Completed 2/25/12

The course was great. I learned a lot. My TA Alexei has been awesome throughout. I never expected such a huge amount of work from his side. He gave me detailed description of my commenting styles, errors, ways I could improve my code etc. Glad to be a part of Quantnet!
Completed 3/5/12.

This is a very good C++ course. Since I was a new programmer in C++, and my TA and Prof Duffy gave me a lot of help on programming. My TA Alan is a very good TA, he is nice and patient, he also answer my question in time and grads my home work with helpful suggestion not only on the homework itself but also advice on programming in C++ in general. So in general, this is very good and helpful class.
Completed 3/10/12

I think the course syllabus is very strong and the homework load is quite intense, which is a great thing. Also, the last part of the course provided a close insight into financial engineering applications in OOP.
And special thanks to my TA Alan, who was extremely helpful and gave me a great piece of advice even beyond the scope of the course.
Completed 3/12/12

- Overall I enjoyed the course. Andy Nguyen of QuantNet has been very quick in responding with any issues relevant to the course.
- The original version of Level 9 exam material was greatly disproportionate in terms of effort compared to all levels before it combined. It took me 1 month trying to understand and navigate through the material and made very slow progress. The updated version corrected appropriately this disparity.
- Dr Daniel Duffy has been helpful. Please see suggestion section on proposed improvements.
- Overall my TA has been less responsive and proactive than I would have preferred. I would have appreciated more involvement from him in the public forums when I raised questions and/or privately.
- The forums have been a good medium to interact with other students and others.
Completed 3/14/12

I am glad to be one of the first group of students for this valuable course and finally finished it. This course is a good fit for me with not much programming experience and no OOP background, because the course teaches C++ from the ground up. It is well organized and covers a broad range of topics in c/c++. The best thing about the course was: what I have learnt and gained in completing the programming assignments which cover most areas taught and are challenging.

My TA was helpful throughout the whole course. He always responded my question quickly and gave me advice about how to improve my solution.

The support provided by Quantnet is good too. The online discussions forum helped me a lot when I was doing the assignments.
Completed 3/20/12

Great course! I learned a lot more than I previously thought. TA is always available. The homework discussion posts on the course forum, in which Prof. Duffy and TAs have answered many many questions, are greatly helpful.
Completed 3/22/12

The course is really great! My TA was very helpful and provide useful comments and suggestions throughout the course. The fact that you can reattempt some exercises (with a cap on the highest mark you can get) is helpful. Course contents are appropriate with sufficient references provided for you to dig into the details and advanced part of the topic. Thumbs up!
Completed 4/4/12

I was able to get a solid background in C++ and options modeling very quickly. It would have taken me at least a year to get this far on my own. The introduction to exact, finite-difference, binomial method, and Monte-Carlo techniques was extremely valuable. Avi, my TA, provided feedback usually within a half a day. He did an outstanding job. Professor Duffy was very accessible online as well. I appreciate Professor Duffy's mathematical knowledge and expertise in the option modeling techniques.
Completed 4/5/12

Very well rounded course that covers most of the C++ concepts that a financial engineer would need. Feeling really comfortable to price derivatives and create programs that are structurally correct and efficient. I would recommend to anyone that is interested in a hard core language that combines control of the system and advance implementation of financial algorithms. Great work Prof. Duffy, Andy, Simon (my TA), the rest of the TA's and the community that supported the question of all the students.
Completed 4/14/12

The course was well structured and well taught, I particularly liked how we build on our homework sets as we progressed through the modules. The continuity certainly helps with understanding the material better. I took the course from a location 12hrs ahead of NY, and the time difference was never a problem as I made good use of the forums.

I had almost no programming background coming into the course - if I can do it, anyone can!
Completed 4/23/12

This was a very exciting and useful class. Graduating from a degree in Computer Graphics, I am going to do my masters next year in Computer Science. This course was a perfect introduction to the advanced features of C++. Lectures were clear, very well paced and the assistance of the TA and the whole quantnet comunity was very useful. I would recommend this course to anyone who want to get more advanced knowledge of C++ and OOP.
Completed 4/27/12

A great course that I would certainly recommend to others.

Quality of the course:
Overall, an engaging and challenging course both in terms of content and the workload. Dr. Duffy managed to explain the difficult concepts well which greatly facilitated learning. It also helped that he was intimately knowledgeable of numerical analysis and C++ as applied to financial applications - I learned more than just programming! The rigorous nature of the assignments also served to reinforce learning through practical application. I liked the portion on STL and Boost, which were the unique points of the course for me compared to similar courses.

TA:
Avi Palley, my TA, was tremendously helpful in being attentive to questions and providing guidance. The quality of his support has been instrumental in facilitating learning of a new programming language. It was a pleasure learning from and interacting with Avi!

Support:
I liked the direct interaction with fellow students, graduates of the course, TAs, and Dr. Duffy through the forum platform. This was one main avenue of support which I thought was rather effective.
Completed 5/4/12

This is a great course for learning solid fundamentals in C++ and the basics of option pricing. I came into the course with almost no programming knowledge (a little bit of R/S-Plus) and left with a wide range of C and C++ knowledge that will help me earn an MFE. My TA, Avi, provided extremely quick and thorough responses to most questions I had, and the rest of the QuantNet community was very helpful as well. I would recommend this course to anyone who needs to boost their programming skills prior to starting an MFE.
Completed 5/14/12

Quality of instruction is certainly one of a kind. The various tools available for students to learn the course material i.e. Videos, PDFs, Forums, TA private messages - catered to everyone's learning style. Even after having prior knowledge of C++, I found the course to be challenging and reinforcing. I would recommend the course for anyone interested in the Quantitative Finance.
Completed 5/24/12
 
I am very pleased to have received today the C++ for financial engineering certificate.
Andy Nguyen Daniel Duffy and Baruch.MFE thank you all for a very enjoyable and highly rewarding experience. Thanks also to all TAs who help out to make this an easier experience.
Happy ride to all who start out on the course :)
Well done,Manos.

I enjoyed your insightful questions and suggestions.
 
I am very pleased to have received today the C++ for financial engineering certificate.
Andy Nguyen Daniel Duffy and Baruch.MFE thank you all for a very enjoyable and highly rewarding experience. Thanks also to all TAs who help out to make this an easier experience.
Happy ride to all who start out on the course :)
I too have just received my certificate. Thanks to everyone involved in this course. :)
It's my pleasure to personally seeing the certificates being produced and mailed to each of our graduates. I take great joy in seeing our students successfully complete the demanding course, become a more qualified MFE applicant or much more competent programmer.
 
I completed the certificate approximately 6 weeks ago and can appreciate the relevance of the course's material to everything I am currently doing. I am completing a BSc in stat/comp science and joined the programming team at my school this semester which trains for ACM programming competitions. There is a lot of STL, bitwise operations, developing of quantitative algorithms etc., i.e., things that I wouldn't have known about had I not completed the course, so I'd like to thank everyone for that. I also find myself looking over code I wrote for the quantnet course problems in order to complete problem sets for my current studies as we are working with C.

Thanks to everyone that helped me during the course and good luck to anyone currently completing/looking to complete the course.
 
I'm very glad to have received my certificate today.

Although the first one had my name printed wrongly, Andy very promptly had it fixed and couriered over in just 8 days. This responsiveness is representative of the quality of administrative support I experienced during the course.

In terms of learning and enrichment, I'd like to thank Dr. Duffy and my tutor Avi Palley for a thoroughly rewarding experience.

I hope many more benefit as much as I have from this course.
 
I just took the final exam today and would like to share my experience. I came into the C++ course with a decent (albeit somewhat stale) background in programming, but no exposure to either object oriented or generic programming. The QuantNet platform, when coupled with Dr. Daniel Duffy's excellent materials and my tutor Avi Palley's always helpful and prompt assistance, made for the perfect learning environment. The community really pulls together to help each other through this rigorous curriculum and I truly feel as if I'm on my way to becoming a great programmer. The final project which deals with the implementation of financial pricing models perfectly brings together everything that has been learned in the earlier modules and leaves the student with a satisfying feeling of accomplishment. Thank you to Dr. Daniel Duffy, APalley and Andy Nguyen for building a great course that I would recommend to anyone applying to a top MFE program.
 
I just finished the course today, and I really want to thank everyone who had helped throughout the course, especially for Dr. Daniel Duffy, Andy Nguyen, and my TA APalley. It is really a great course to start computational finance. Also, I really appreciate the QuantNet forum, honestly speaking, I was about to quit the course because too much was going on in my study. However, when I saw the forum was full of posted question every time, I was motivated again. It was a wonderful experience. Thank you !
 
I would suggest this course to everyone interested in being a quant. It will help you master relevant C++ skills in shortest time. It is very helpful for quant interview.
 
Hey everyone,
I am planning to take this course. Can you please let me know on average how many hours you spent on this course?
I dont have any experience with C++.
Thanks
 
Hey everyone,
I am planning to take this course. Can you please let me know on average how many hours you spent on this course?
I dont have any experience with C++.
Thanks
Maria
You should treat this as a full-semester course so a minimum of 20 hours per week would ensure that you are able to complete it successfully within 16-weeks. Some more experienced students have completed this in 60 days or less but majority of students would need the 16-week.
 
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