Udacity Data Structures and Algorithms Nanodegree Review 2023: Learn to Crack Coding Interviews

Data structures and Algorithms are very important tools in the world of programming. It is used in building fast, reliable, scalable, robust, and efficient Computer Software. It is also used in mobile app and website development. If you want to crack the interviews of the Big tech or product-based companies, then you definitely have to master the data structures and algorithm. 

There are various data structures and algorithm tutorials available over the internet but you are only going to learn it completely with the help of the right practice and guidance. 

Today, in this Data Structures and Algorithms Nanodegree review, I’ll discuss the details about the course, the pros, and cons, syllabus to decide whether it can help you to land a job or not.

	Udacity	Coursera Data Structures and Algorithms Specialization	Edx MicroMasters® Program Algorithms and Data Structures	Bootcamps(Springboard, Careerfoundry, etc.)
Rating (based on project)	⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐	⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐
Price	$399/month (on discount)	$49/month	$600-$1000	$5000+
	Go to course	Go to course	Go to course	Go to course

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About the Udacity Data Structures and Algorithms Nanodegree

The Udacity Data Structures and Algorithm Nanodegree is a set of courses, lessons, and projects designed to excel you in any of the technical or coding interviews.

Either it’s a tech giant, a popular start-up, or a multinational company if you have a strong foundation of Data Structures and algorithms with decent communication skills, then you can definitely crack their interviews and secure a job. 

Udacity is a trusted name and giant in online educational organizations that aim to help students and professionals to enhance and develop their skills and give a boost to their careers with the help of online courses in programming and some other technology-related stuff. 

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

In this data structure and algorithm Nanodegree, you will practice more than 100 data structures and algorithm problems and exercise with excellent mentor support who will guide you in understanding the concepts, preparing for the interviews, and covering all the upcoming job scenarios.

Prior basic knowledge of Python programming and Algebra is recommended to enhance your learning from this Nanodegree. 

Basic knowledge of syntax and the use of different conditional statements are required to enroll in the program because if your basics are not clear, you cannot learn data structures, algorithms, and their implementation properly.

Udacity has a remarkable experience in the field of online educations and learning, they only have top-rated instructors for there any of the courses or programs which is why they are popular and valuable among the students trying to learn new skills online.

This program will definitely improve your problem-solving approach and implementation skills, by the end of each course you will be able to evaluate and explore different data structures and algorithms for any of the complex or logical problems and implement an efficient solution based on your approach.

I have done detailed research on this Nanodegree to find whether it’s worth it to recommend you.

I came across a review by Alex Bravo, who has completed 4 Nanodegrees from Udacity. You can have a look at his review of data structures and algorithms Nanodegree and project details on his GitHub profile.

Apart from those mentioned on the course page, here are some top reviews from earlier Udacity Data Structures and Algorithms Nanodegeree Graduates.

Job Scenario

Various tech giants and product-based companies offer a really huge salary to the candidates having solid and strong data structures and algorithm knowledge. 

Having a strong foundation in DS and Algo helps you a lot in competitive programming, and most of the high-level coding questions in the top companies’ interviews are very much similar to the questions asked in competitive programming.

There is no specific job like data structures and algorithms directly, but every job in the field of the software and information technology industry requires at least basic knowledge of it. 

Either you are a Software engineer, DevOps engineer, Data engineer, or even a Web developer, if you are creating and working on fast, reliable, robust software and application kinds of stuff, then you will have to learn data structures and algorithms. 

On average, a software engineer earns up to $110,000 per annum in the US market, also they are paid well in different parts of the world on the basis of their level of skills and experience. 

Check out jobs related to data structures and algorithms on Glassdoor

This complete Udacity Data Structures and Algorithm Nanodegree review will help you to understand the basic concept of data structure and algorithm deeply and provide you the confidence to perform your best in any of the tech interviews. 

I will also cover each of the program’s features, advantages, and disadvantages so that you get a clear picture of what you can expect from this Nanodegree in this Udacity Data Structures and Algorithms Nanodegree review.

Also Read: Udacity Data Scientist Nanodegree review

Costs and Duration

So, let’s know about the cost of this Nanodegree in this Udacity Data Structures and Algorithms Nanodegree review. The overall duration of the Udacity Data Structures and Algorithm Nanodegree is of 4 months in which you have to give at least 10 hrs per week. 

You should give maximum time to learning the skills, concepts from this program, and extract the most out of it. Strong dedication is required after enrollment in the program, as things can be a bit complicated even for the intermediate programmers.

 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 Data Structure and Algorithm Nanodegree program. 

You should always stick to the date of completion and the deadlines of the projects so that you may not lag behind and make it a large learning process.

You can sign up here

Pre-requisite for Data Structures and Algorithms Nanodegree

Coming to the prerequisite in this Udacity Data Structures and Algorithms Nanodegree review, Intermediate knowledge of Python programming and basic algebra is required to optimize and excel in your chance of success and developing skills from the Nanodegree. 

If you have never done any kind of programming stuff, then you should do some kind of online courses and exercises of Python programming.

In case you are a beginner and wonder how things work in the world of programming, then you should definitely try Udacity Introduction to Programming Nanodegree. 

Once you have prior knowledge of Python Programming and basic algebra along with some problem-solving skills, you are ready to rock by enrolling in the Udacity Data structures and Algorithm Nanodegree and learning the valuable skills.

Also Read: Udacity Data Analyst Nanodegree review

Syllabus of Data Structures and Algorithms Nanodegree

Talking about the syllabus in this Udacity Data Structures and Algorithms Nanodegree Review, the entire syllabus is divided into 4 courses. There is one challenging project after the end of every course to brush up on your learnings and implementations. 

So let’s know more about the Courses and Projects of this Nanodegree in this Udacity Data Structures and Algorithms Nanodegree review.

Course 1:

So this is the first course of your Nanodegree, here you will get an overview of your Nanodegree, you will meet your instructor, and you will brush up on your python programming skills. 

Python is a programming language that will be used throughout the program. Once you understand the basic concept of problem-solving using data structures and algorithms, then you can easily switch to any other programming language in a short period of time.

 Course 1 of the program is divided into four lessons. 

 Lesson 1 is the Introduction.

You will be given a brief introduction to the overall program, the courses, other lessons, and most importantly the projects.

Lesson 2 is a Python refresher.

In this lesson, you will get to revise all the basics of Python programming, which includes syntax, functionalities, objects, and classes along with some of the important data structures. 

Lesson 3 is how to solve problems.

Here you will learn one of the most important tips and tricks to solve programming problems. You will learn the right approach to solve any problem in an optimized and efficient manner. 

This lesson will definitely enhance your problem-solving skill, which is very important for any of the developers.

Lesson 4 is Big O Notation.

Here you will learn a bit about the analysis of the algorithm, the Big O analysis of the Algorithm, and the Big O Notation which defines the upper bound of an algorithm.

It comes under Asymptotic notations which is a kind of mathematical tool used to represent the time complexity of an algorithm.

After you have completed the first course and gone through all of its lessons, now it’s time for you to work on a simple project of Unscramble Computer Science Problems, in this project you will work on a series of open-ended problems and deconstruct them into smaller components to understand it’s working in detail. 

It’s kind of a recreating a problem from a solution.

Course 2: Data Structures

Now, you will be learning some really valuable and important core stuff. You will learn different data structures that can be used to optimize, store data. 

This course of the Nanodegree consists of four lessons to increase your understanding and problem-solving skills gradually.

Lesson 1 is the collection of data structures (Arrays, Linked List, Stack, Queue, Lists), these are the important data structure which has various use in data interpretation and data handling. 

You will learn about them one by one and implement them in your own program. By practicing more and more, you will gradually learn the implementation of these data structures at different places in any of your programs.

 Lesson 2 is Recursion.

 Recursion is kind of a process in which a function calls itself in the program directly or indirectly.

 Lesson 3 is Trees. 

In this lesson, you will learn about the logical and complex data structure Trees.

Lesson 4 is Maps and hashing. 

So in this very lesson, you will learn about the Maps and Hashing data structure which is used to design a special function called the hash function.

This Hash function can be used to map a given value with a set of a particular key for faster and optimized access of elements. This is an important topic and a bit logical, which is the reason why most of the beginners skip them.

Course 3: Basic Algorithm

After learning the data structure and having hands-on practice on it, now you will learn the basic algorithm in this course. 

In this course, you will be learning and implementing basic algorithms such as searching, sorting, recursion on different data structures, and optimizing the efficiency of these algorithms. 

You will also learn the implementation of an algorithm with and without the use of recursion.

Course 3 is divided into 3 lessons, let have a look at each of them in detail.

Lesson 1 is the Binary Search

The binary search is a powerful algorithm, the idea behind this searching algorithm is to use the information that the array is sorted and reduce the time complexity to O (log n). 

Lesson 2 is a Sorting Algorithm. 

In this lesson, you will learn about the sorting algorithms, the basic idea behind the various sorting algorithms such as Selection sort, Bubble sort, insertion sort, Merge sort, Quicksort, Radix sort, bucket sort, and many others.

Lesson 3 is the Divide and conquer algorithm.

 The divide and conquer algorithm is used to solve a large variety of problems. It is also used in various sorting algorithms.

After the completion of all these lessons, you will get a clear view of the meaning, approach, and working of algorithms.

Now, you will be working on your 3rd project of this Nanodegree. The project of this course is the Problems vs. Algorithm, where you will try to solve a series of real-world open-ended problems such as search term auto-completion, request routing for web services, and Fibonacci series with the heap.

Course 4: Advanced Algorithms

Now coming to the final course of the program, you will learn the Advanced Algorithms. 

You will develop your algorithm skills by learning more advanced algorithms such as Greedy algorithms, Brute force algorithms, graph algorithm, and dynamic programming which is used to optimize recursion by storing results to sub-problems. 

This final course is also divided into four lessons, let discuss each of them one by one in detail.

Lesson 1 is the Greedy Algorithm. 

The greedy algorithm is a kind of paradigm in which the solution is built piece by piece, choosing the next piece that offers the most valuable and faster benefit.

You will learn the approach and implementation of the Greedy Algorithm in this lesson.

Lesson 2 is a Graph Algorithm. 

You will learn all about Graph Algorithms, their approaches, uses, and implementations.

Lesson 3 is Dynamic Programming.

Dynamic programming is always a bit confusing and difficult to implement but you will easily learn it in this very lesson. Dynamic programming is used to optimize a recursive solution that has repeated calls for the same inputs.

Lesson 4 is Linear Programming.

In this lesson, you will learn about linear programming and its implementations, it is an optimization technique for a system of linear constraint or a linear objective function.

So after completing the final course and all the lessons, it’s time for you to work on the project of this course.

The course of the project is Route Planner. You will be building a route planner algorithm similar to the one used in Google Maps to calculate and find the shortest path between two different points on the map.

Now you have done all the learnings, implementations, and practice. Remember revising and practicing your skills learned in this program is the only thing that can maximize your profit and boost your career after enrolling in the program. 

Hope you enjoying this Data Structures and Algorithms Nanodegree review interesting.

Also see -> Udacity Introduction to Python Review: Is it worth it?

Nanodegree Certificate

You will receive a similar Udacity Data Structures and Algorithms Nanodegree certification upon graduation and completion of the complete program. 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 or Github profile to highlight yourself as a proficient Data Structures and Algorithm developer. You can easily access your certificate through your Udacity account.

Also, see -> My Experience: Udacity Review 2022| Are Nanodegrees Worth It?

Some Advance features you get with Udacity

Udacity is popular for its valuable and updated courses which have helped thousands of students, learners, and professionals to improve their skills and land a better job. 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.

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 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 MNC’s. 

Check this out -> Udacity Java Web Developer Nanodegree Review

Now, let check the final conclusion of this Udacity Data Structures and Algorithms Nanodegree review.

Is it worth it?

Learning and practicing data structure and algorithms is very important as they are the key component of every technical interview for software engineers, DevOps engineers, Web developers, and many more.

A lot of people have a bad or weak foundation of data structures and algorithms due to which they find it very difficult to crack interviews and get a job in a high-profile company. 

The structure of the course, the syllabus is designed to make you understand the basic concepts and foundation of data structure and algorithm so that you feel confident to crack the interview and get the desired job in your dream company.

Overall, this Udacity Data Structures and Algorithms Nanodegree is up to the mark and is best for every intermediate-level Python programmer who wants to master their data structures and algorithms skills. Hope you find this Udacity Data Structures and Algorithms Nanodegree review useful.

In the end, I would say yes to this Udacity Data Structures and Algorithms Nanodegree, moreover, it’s all up to you, why, and how you are going to use it to achieve the best possible outcome from the program.

Udacity is offering personalized discount.