Udacity C++ Nanodegree Review 2023: Is it Worth to Learn C++ From Udacity?

Udacity C++ nanodegree review
Udacity C++ nanodegree review

In this Udacity C++ Nanodegree review, I will talk about how Udacity will help you to master C++ programming language.

Udacity is offering personalised discount.

The demand and the popularity of the C++ developer are increasing day by day because of the use of C++ programming language in today’s GUI i.e Graphical user interface, operating systems, embedded system and to create high-performance applications.

It’s a cross-platform language and is one of the world’s most popular programming languages.

C++ is a kind of object-oriented programming language which gives the user a defined structure to write their programs and reuse their code with low-cost development.

It is used to develop portable and cross or multi-platform high-performance applications.

The language gives a higher level of control over memory and other systems resources.

It has a really fast execution speed which is why it is also loved by most of the competitive programmers all over the world.

If you want to learn a C++ programming language and became a proficient C++ developer then you are at the right place at the right time, because in this Udacity C++ Nanodegree Review, we will be covering all the aspects, pros, and cons, syllabus, advantages, and all other details of the program closely.

Let me show you what Mr.Chase, an earlier graduate has to share from his personnel experience of learning from Udacity C++ Nanodegree on his blog.

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He graduated from the Udacity C++ Nanodegree program this April.

I graduated from the Udacity C++ Nanodegree program this week and I feel very good about what I accomplished over the past four months – Chace Medeiros

You can visit his blog and check his GitHub projects here

Before moving to other reviews of this Udacity C++ Nanodegree program, let’s first talk about the job scenario for C++ developers.

If you buy the course through the links in this article, we can earn some affiliate commission.  This helps us to keep OnlineCourseing up and running for your benefit.

Job Scenario

Professional C++ developers have a strong and solid foundation in the C++ language, along with Data structures and Algorithms.

They play a very important role in the company as they provide an efficient solution to almost any problem that may occur, and this is one of the reasons why they are paid really well.

According to Glassdoor, C++ developers have a salary of $71,000 per annum in the US.

C ++ developer salary

C++ developers are also paid well in different parts of the world on the basis of their level of skills and experiences.

This complete review will help you understand how the Udacity C++ Nanodegree program can help you to land a high paying job.

About the Udacity C++ Nanodegree Program

Udacity C++ Nanodegree review

The Udacity C++ Nanodegree program is a set of courses designed to land you a job as a C++ developer.

You will learn how C++, a high-performance programming language is used in various engineering jobs and real-life technologies such as robotics, servers, media platforms, self-driving cars, web browsers, etc.

If you don’t know much about Udacity and how it helps to land in a job, have a look at this article.

Udacity is a big name and giant in educational organizations founded in 2011 which helps you to advance in your career with the help of online courses in programming, artificial intelligence, digital marketing, data science, and many more.

You will undergo various coding projects which will make you understand different concepts of the programming world.

Prior intermediate knowledge of any programming knowledge is recommended to boost your chance of success in the Udacity C++ Nanodegree program.

Step by Step you will learn the basic concepts and then gradually you will learn the advanced one.

Initially, you will learn the core foundation of the language, develop, compile, and execute C++ programs, their syntax, functions, and methods.

Then you will learn Object-Oriented Programming or OOP to build classes, interfaces, and a blueprint to create a program. OOP is one of the most popular features of the C++ programming language, which allows you to write clean and reusable code.

After that, you will learn memory management and concurrency in which you will explore the control and management of the static and dynamic memory using resource allocation such as pointers, patterns, and references.

At last, you will be involved in some real-life or fascinating projects where you will use all your C++ language knowledge and programming skills for overall better understanding.

You might be building your own C++ application at the end of the program.

Udacity has years of experience in the online education field and has only the top instructors for their courses or programs, which is why they are popular and valuable among the students trying to learn new skills online.

The course is good for students who have some prior knowledge in C++ programming and for those who want to switch their job and became a proficient C++ Developer.

Costs and Duration

The overall duration of the Udacity C++ Nanodegree program is 4 months, in which you have to give at least 10 hrs per week.

You should give maximum time to learning the skills from this program and extract the most out of it.

You can enroll now for accessing the complete 4-month duration of the course by paying a reasonable amount of $1243. However, If you want to pay monthly for the course, then you can pay $311 and continue your learning with the Udacity C++ Nanodegree program.

It is recommended to stick to the date of completion and the deadline, so you may not lag behind and make it a long learning process.

You can Sign up here for the C++ Nanodegree

Pre-requisites

Intermediate knowledge of any programming knowledge is required to boost your chances of success and learning the most out of the Udacity C++ Nanodegree program.

If you have never done any kind of programming stuff, then we recommend you to complete any basic programming fundamentals courses. You can start learning basic programming fundamentals and concepts from any online courses.

You can also prefer Udacity for learning those basic programming skills. If you have intermediate knowledge of programming and its concepts then devoting your time to learning skills is the only thing you have to do.

I suggest you to take this free C++ course on Udacity C++ for Programmers

Syllabus of C++ Nanodegree Program

The entire syllabus of the Udacity C++ Nanodegree program is divided into 4 courses, where each course has its own importance in building blocks of programming skills.

Let’s have an in-depth view of the courses and their offerings.

Every course has an interesting and complex project which will use all the information and knowledge learned throughout the course. This will give you experience and confidence in working on a hands-on project in C++.

Course 1: C++ Foundation

This will be the first course of your program, where you will learn all the basics of C++ programming such as syntax, functions, containers, linking, and compilation of multiple files, etc. Course 1 part of the program consists of three lessons. 

Lesson one is the Introduction to the C++ programming language, in which you will get to know the basics of the C++ language and improve your prior coding or programming experience. You will use loops, vectors, input, and output libraries to transfer data from files and print them on the ASCII board. You will later use it on route planning applications.

Lesson two is A* Search, as the name suggests, you will learn all about the A* search algorithm and use it in the implementation of planning a path through the obstacles in the ASCII board. You will code a program that will be able to print the solution to the screen with clean ASCII formatting.

Lesson three is writing the multi-files program with the help of the syntax of the C++ language features, you will be completing an overview of the header files, build tools, classes, and pointers. 

After completing these lessons, you will work on a realistic project and build an OpenStreetMap Route Planner.

You will learn in detail about the OpenStreetMap data and IO2D map display code. You will add features to the IO2D map display code with the help of the A*Search algorithm so that your program will be able to find a path between two points on the map.

After the completion of the project, you will be able to select the starting and ending areas on a city map, and your program will be able to find a path along the city streets to connect those points.

Course 2: Object-Oriented Programming

In this second course, you will explore the important concepts of Object-Oriented programming or OOP in C++ with the help of exercises and examples covering all the essential topics of the OOP like abstraction, inheritance, polymorphism, templates, etc.

Course 2 of the program consists of three lessons.

Lesson one is the Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming in C++, here you will learn the context and features of Object-Oriented Programming and practice its implementation along with the basic features such as polymorphism, encapsulation, abstraction, etc.

Lesson two is the Access Modifiers and Inheritance, in this lesson you will learn about the C++ classes, their great functionality especially when it comes to defining a kind of member within a class, and how you can provide access to those members or prevent it. You will also learn access modifiers and inheritance to build more useful and complex classes.

Lesson three is the Polymorphism and templates, where you will write member functions for classes that do various types of work on the parameters passed to it. You will use templates, write generic functions that accept different kinds of input parameters. These all will add more functionality to your classes and overall C++ program.

After going through these lessons, you will build a Linux monitor application system to demonstrate C++ Object-oriented programming properties. You will have to write a Linux system monitor with functionality similar to htop application. This will provide you insights into how a collection of objects can function together in C++ to form a complete application.

Course 3: Memory Management

Memory Management is very important in the development of any software or application, as it can decide several factors to which the performance of the applications is directly linked.

In this course, you will learn memory management in C++ by exploring stack, heap, pointers, references, smart pointers, new, delete, and much more. This Course of the program is also divided into five lessons.

Lesson one is the Overview of the memory types,

In this lesson, you will understand the basic memory hierarchy in computer systems, which is very important for efficient memory management.

This lesson will cover all the basic concepts such as cache, virtual memory, the structure of the memory addresses, etc. You will also learn how the debugger can be used to read data from memory.

Lesson two is the Variables and Memory, in this lesson you will understand the process memory model which contains heap and stack, the two fundamental memory areas, and for the memory-efficient passing of the parameter you will learn and understand the concept of call-by-value and call-by-reference.

Lesson three is Dynamic Memory Allocation, this is one of the crucial sections of the overall program as here you will be introduced to Dynamic memory allocation especially on the heap. You will get to understand the main difference between stack and heap so that you quickly make a decision about the correct allocation and reallocation of the memory. You will also learn some commands used in the allocation of the memory such as free, malloc, new, delete. In addition to all this, you will solve basic problems based on memory management.

Lesson four is Resource Copying Policies, in this lesson you will learn how to customize resource copying using the Rule of Three. Understand the basics of the Ivalue and rvalue semantics. Learn the mechanism for memory-efficient programming and the process which enables fast and low-cost data transfers between program scopes. You will also learn the implementation of Rule of Five, which is a memory management strategy used in your program.

Lesson Five is Smart Pointers, in this lesson you will learn and understand why pointers are so important for C++ programmers, why they are a valuable tool for every programmer, and how they help to avoid memory leaks and establish a clear and concise resource model. You will be comparing three types of smart pointers in C++ and get to know their advantages and disadvantages, and learn how to transfer ownership from one program to another using copy and move semantics.

You will gain a lot of knowledge and information so by the end of this course you will be working on a chatbot project, the chatbot creates a dialogue where users can ask questions about aspects of memory management in C++. You will have to optimize the project with the best memory management method such as smart pointers and semantics.

Course 4: Concurrency and Capstone Project

Concurrency is a kind of advanced programming technique that can accelerate or boost your C++ program’s efficiency and speed. In this last course, you will learn how concurrent programming runs multiple threads of execution in parallel and manages the multitasking processes.

C nanodegree udacity

This final course has two different projects, one is the course based, and the other is the final project made by you. This course is divided into three lessons. 

Lesson one is Managing threads, here you will learn important differences between processes and threads. You can start your own thread in various ways and pass data to them. You will write your own concurrent program that runs multiple threads at the same time.

Lesson two is Passing Data Between Threads, in this lesson you will use promises and futures as a communication channel between threads, use the task as an alternative to threads. You will also learn different strategies to avoid data races.

Lesson three is Mutexes, Locks, and Condition Variables, here you will use Mutexes and locks to safely access shared data from various threads. You will use condition variables as a basic sync tool between threads. You may implement a concurrent message queue for flexible inter-thread communication.

So after the completion of all these lessons from the last course, you will work on a Concurrent Traffic Simulation Project in which you will build a multithreaded traffic simulator using the urban map.

To facilitate traffic flow and avoid collisions you will have to manage intersections and run vehicles on a separate thread, you will use state of the art concurrency concepts.

After all these learnings, implementations, and practice, now you will be working on the final Capstone Project in which you will use your all C++ skills, learnings, concepts to build your own application using C++. 

Also Read: Udacity Data Structures and Algorithms Nanodegree Review

You personally have to choose your application, design its architecture, and build a prototype. You will have to use different concepts such as fundamentals, Object-Oriented Programming, memory management, concurrency, and some others which you have learned in this Nanodegree program.

7. Pros and Cons

So after discussing the prerequisite of the program, costs and duration, and the syllabus,

Now let’s discuss some of the Pros and Cons of the Udacity C++ Nanodegree Program.

Pros:

  • Lots of learning stuff to improve your programming skills and fundamentals required to become a proficient C++ developer.
  • Exciting projects after completion of every course in the program.
  • Knowledgeable technical mentor support throughout the program.
  • You can learn at your pace and achieve your personal goal on your own made schedule as they have a flexible learning program.
  • Studying with Udacity will always give you the advantages of a Personal career coach and services to help you out in interview preparation, building a resume, and online professional profile to boost your career.
  • They have a really knowledgeable and world-class instructor for their programs.
  • The Course has been rated 4.5 stars out of 5 by most of the learners and graduates enrolled in the program.
  • A kind of financial support is available worldwide in this challenging time of the Pandemic.

Cons:

  • The price of the program is a bit fairly high.
  • Requires intermediate knowledge of any programming language. You should try to learn OOP’s, memory, and some different basic concepts of programming before enrolling in this Udacity C++ Nanodegree program.
  • The Job role of the C++ developer is highly competitive and requires a good knowledge of problem-solving skills, which can only be acquired by practice.

9. The Advance features you get with Udacity

Udacity is popular for its valuable and updated courses, which have helped thousands of students and professionals to improve their skills and land a better job. Apart from the courses and lessons in the program, they offer some extra services which make this C++ Nanodegree so special. Let’s have a look at some of their services.

1. Mentorship

They have a world-class mentorship, which is one of the best parts of the Udacity programs. Mentors guide you throughout the entire program. 

They will try to answer your every query and doubts which you might face in the program. Also, they will be responsible for reviewing your projects and providing feedback.

They already know how challenging some of the typical concepts can be, so they will always be in your corner to boost your confidence and motivate you.

2. Career Services

They always try their best to get you hired and that’s the reason why they help you in the preparation of Job interviews and building a professional resume and profile.

Your resume and profile will be reviewed by an expert who will recommend you to make changes and improvements in it if required.

Udacity shares your profile with their partnered organizations.

3. Community and discussion forums

Udacity has a nice community feature where you will meet other like-minded peers from your batch and communicate with them.

You can share your ideas, ask a question in a group or any student, and build a professional classroom-like environment.

4. Projects and High-Quality content

The quality of the content of any online learning platform is what really matters. It is more important than any other stuff available online. Here in Udacity, you will get high-quality content and project-based learning, the programs are overall project-centric.

You will be working on some realistic and interesting projects, which will definitely help you to gain more practical experience. All of your projects will be reviewed by your mentors, who will guide you throughout the program.

You can add your projects and certificates to your LinkedIn profile to attract potential employers. The instructors are industry professionals and many of them come from big MNCs.

Reviews from Earlier Nanodegree Graduates

C++ Nanodegree Certificate

Ahmed Magdy Aboutaleb

The C++ Nanodegree certified by the man himself who created the C++, Bjarne Stroustrup.

It was a 2-month journey with one of the most challenging courses where I had the chance to learn and broaden my knowledge in the basic concepts of C++ such as Object-Oriented Programming (OOP), Memory Management, and Concurrency.

I was able to implement these concepts on 3 main projects:

Linux System Monitor: https://lnkd.in/e4-G-GM

Concurrent traffic Simulation: https://lnkd.in/e_QsE7W

ChatBot: https://lnkd.in/er_AYEx

Finally, a Capstone project where I used all I have learned throughout the nanodegree to implement a 2D Snake game and add functionalities to it.
2D-SnakeGame: https://lnkd.in/egHEnu9

Via Linkedin

C++ Nanodegree Certificate

Sahil Kumar

I am happy to announce that after a couple of months of studying, I have successfully graduated from the Udacity C++ Nanodegree.

As anticipated, this program strengthened my knowledge in many aspects of C++ such as OOP programming, Concurrency, and generational improvements of the C++ compiler.

I have highly engrossed in these topics thanks to the multiple projects I also pursued in this course such as:
1) A Star open street map path planning.
2) HTOP mimicking system monitor for Linux using OOP and file parsing.
3) Chatbot that used memory management to improve performance efficiency.
4) Synchronous traffic light simulation using concurrency.
5) C++ Snake game capstone project.

You can also find the same projects on https://lnkd.in/dM6ypf8

via linkedin

C++ Nanodegree Certificate

Marwan A. Rashed

I was able to finish seven projects in two months. The projects were about path planning, a Linux task manager, a concurrent chatbot, and a 2D Snake game. The courses are well organized and intense. They cover most of the essential topics for a professional C++ Software developer. Topics such as OOP, memory management (smart pointers and dynamic memory allocation), and multi-threading were explained in-depth with multiple real scenario practices. Finally, I highly recommend this program.

You can take a look at the projects on my GitHub profile:
https://lnkd.in/esezzga

-via LinkedIn

Ioannis Margaris

Ioannis Margaris

The Nanodegree also has a really active community of students and mentors but is also backed by tips/advice by the great Bjarne Stroustrup.

A big thank you to #Udacity and all the mentors for helping me achieve this milestone.

I would highly recommend this Nanodegree to anyone looking to learn C++!

via LinkedIn

Shivam Bhardwaj

Shivam Bhardwaj

I wrote my first C++ program about 10 years ago.. Loved the language then, but this NanoDegree truly showed what was missing from my arsenal of this powerhouse.

C++ IS A MODERN LANGAUGE – Bjarne Stroustrup, and I get it now.

via LinkedIn

Here are some improvement reviews

Here is a screenshot of a review from an unsatisfied learner.

This one says that the course is bit expensive.

C++ Nanodegree Certificate

You will receive a similar Udacity C++ Nanodegree certification upon graduation. Well, you should know that this certificate is not accredited by any university, but it’s definitely a perfect way to show potential recruiters about your qualification and skills. 

You should definitely add it to your LinkedIn profile to highlight yourself as a professional C++ developer. You can easily access your certificate through your Udacity account.

Having a certificate from a reputed Massive Open Online Course is always an advantage for you. After the completion of the Udacity C++ Nanodegree program, you will receive a decent graduation certification from them.

Most employers and potential recruiters are aware of the value of the content provided by Udacity and other big online educational platforms.

Conclusion

C++ developers are always in demand and earn really well depending on their skills and experience. However, being a C++ developer is not that easy, competition is already on the peek as every year thousands of new programmers and developers are entering the market.

This Udacity C++ Nanodegree program makes you learn and understand the basics as well as advanced and difficult topics not only theoretically but with the help of some realistic and awesome projects. You should not directly enroll in the program if you don’t or have only a little of C++ or any programming. They will be covering all the difficult and high-level concepts which require you to have prior intermediate knowledge of programming.

Overall, this Udacity C++ Nanodegree program is up to the mark and is best for every intermediate-level programmer who wants to become a professional C++ developer.

I say Yes to this Udacity C++ Nanodegree program, but it’s all up to you, why, and how you’re going to use it to achieve the best possible outcome from the program.

Udacity C++ nanodegree review

Udacity C++ Nanodegree

Udacity is offering personalized discount.

Josh Hutcheson

E-Learning Specialist in Online Programs & Courses Linkedin

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