Software Development Capstone Project

I am seriously disappointed with this course, it's lazy, unmaintained and downright horrible.

I will say that all the other courses in this MicroMasters (where this program is the last course for), are amazing and extremely fun even. In the first two courses not only were we taught how to code but it was explained very nicely and there were plenty of practice problems to get you used to it, and if you would get stuck you could ask in the discussion forum and within days you would get helpful comments from the staff. In the 3rd and 4th courses it was pretty much the same, making the learning extremely fun. And I would do them again if i was given the chance and recommend them to anyone interested in learning to program.

Then, however came the 5th course "software Engineering: introduction", taught by reid holmes, and this is when everything went downhill, limited real-life examples, no practice problems for you to put what you learned into practice, poorly explained lectures and the discussion forums were not maintained.

And then, the reason why I am writing this, the capstone project. Oh boy, this is by far the worst course I have ever taken online or in person. To start off with, when I tried getting the starter code for the first section, I was sent to SDMM portal where I should have been able to get the starter project, but every time I tried to do so I was given an error, I went to the discussion forum and there was a person that had the same problem already 2 weeks before i even joined and the course staff didn't respond to him, and didn't fix it. So I also decided to start a discussion with the same problem, and still nobody responded, I had to reach out to the edx support team to get something done and it still took me about 2 weeks to be able to get the starter code.

Then, I started the first section of the course, and I had to code in a language we were not taught and write tests in a way completely alien to us and that had never been explained and wasn't, you had to go online to figure out what you were supposed to do, again people complained in the discussion forums but nobody ever responds. After i figured out what i had to do, it was explained that we had to go to the next section to get the specifications to write the tests. after I finally finished the section I put my code up for grading, I still haven't received a grade after a month.

Anyway I started the second section of the course, and I am still stuck without the course staff wanting to help, or they just don't exist.You are supposed to use specific libraries, you can't use your own, which would be easier and more practical. You are supposed to use libraries in javascript while programming in typescript, there is no documentation for typescript, there is no support from the staff in this area, it is not explained in detail what you are supposed to do, or how to do it. You are also supposed to implement a few key words for queries, which is said is that it is not even finished, yes, we are supposed to make a sort of query language without being given the keywords for the query language.

please do not waste your money, this last part is just not worth it.

"Great access to coaching staff" === "A TA responding in 1/2 - 1 days with a response that's the equivalent of someone shrugging their shoulders.

There has not been 1 student to complete this program. Why? BECAUSE THE CAPSTONE IS A GIGANTIC HORROR OF POORLY WRITTEN CODE.

And, for some reason they just upped the requirements to pass from 1 section to the next to be 90%, which seems near impossible.

There is 0 feedback from the automated grading bot on GitHub so you have no idea how to improve your grade.

The whole experience seems thrown together as an afterthought. I want my 300 dollars back, and the amount I paid for each course in the MicroMasters program because the only reason I paid for each one was to get the stupid MicroMasters certificate in the first place.

Don't think I will ever consider doing anytime of MicroMasters on edx again.