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Full Stack Open - Reflections of the Course

Laura Ojala on January 05, 2020

Full stack open is a free online course organized by University of Helsinki and some top-notch Finnish companies. Stack is very up-to-date: single-...
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bishopsfeed

When going through each part of the course, did you keep an editor open with the study material and one open with the exercises ?

Iā€™m trying to figure out the best way to work through the course because it switches from follow along material to exercises often.

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Laura Ojala

I was reading the chapter first and then doing the coding exercises. In other words, I was not usually doing the example exercises (except for a couple of times, when things got hard to understand otherwise) šŸ˜€ Quite often I was first reading the chapter, then started the exercises, and then read the chapter again more thoroughly.

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Aanyu Deborah Oduman

Hey Laura, I'm from Uganda. I would like to start doing the full stack open course but as a non-Finland citizen, I'm not sure how to go about this exactly. I would love to qualify to sit for the exam at the end, and get my certificate too, but the documentation is not very clear, at least for foreigners. Especially about obtaining your username or ID. Its quite confusing.

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Laura Ojala

Hi! It was a bit complicated even for me as a native Finn. I suggest you ask this question in the course Telegram channel.

I believe it is possible to get the certificate (as pictured in the header of this post) without the exam and the exam is only needed if you want to register credits to a school.

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Aanyu Deborah Oduman

Alright. Thank you Laura.

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javierpreda

Hi Laura, thanks for this insightful article about the Full Stack Open, I'm planning to take the course this year. I'm a Web Designer who knows very well html 5, css, sass, but struggling with modern development tools like node, react etc. so, what prerequisites you'll think someone needs in order to be ready for taking the course? and one last question: how many hours a week should I dedicate to the course? Thanks!

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Laura Ojala

Hello Javier! In my opinion, the most important pre-requisite is "Participants are expected to have good programming skills". So you should have a solid understanding of fundamentals of programming with some language (booleans, if-else, for loops, handling lists, and dictionaries, methods, objects, and data types).

Participants are not expected to have prior knowledge related to the React/Node/MongoDB stack. And also more "fancy algorithms" (such as arrow functions and functional JS arrow methods) are introduced in the course.

I prepared for the course by studying JavaScript syntax and concepts (from the book Eloquent JavaScript), but because of your background, you most probably know already enough JS. And most definitely you understand enough about how browser apps work!

And about study time: course itself does not have any schedule to follow (expect the final deadline) and some of the exercises are optional. So you can very well adjust the schedule. If you complete all modules, do all exercises and study also documentation and other resources beyond the course material, it is realistic to spend 17.5 hours for one ETCS credit, which means it is 17.5*8 =140 hours. And if you study for 6 months, it will be around 6 hours a week (but as said, you can proceed also in less time).

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javierpreda

Thanks for your reply Laura! Can't wait to start the course!

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Safin Ghoghabori

Hi Laura, thank you for your explanation. i have stilll some questions as below:

i'm from India so will i be able to sit for exams?, will i get certificate? will i be able to apply for job?

and further more if you dont mind can you list out websites where i need to register first before starting this course? (PS: i read on official website but its somehow weird and confusing so)

I'll appreciate your time and help.

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Alen Abraham

Hey i am also from India how can i enroll in the course

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Tonghe Wang • Edited

Hi Laura, thanks for your post. The course seemed quite daunting at the first look. But seeing the number of hours you put in helps me assess how heavy the workload actually is. I'll begin the course right away and hopefully keep up with it one part per week.

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Laura Ojala

Most definitely it is! Everything is very well explained there and you know more JS that is required (but it does no harm either).

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Shiva

My machine works with node.js 13.14 but not higher.
Can i make use of fullstackopen without node 14? Because the website tells you to install 14 and not prev versions