The Gradle Masterclass

📚 **Global Course Rating:** 4.26 ### Review Summary: **Pros:** - ✅ **Comprehensive Coverage:** The course covers enough topics to get started with Gradle and explores it in detail, suitable for beginners who have no prior knowledge of Gradle. - ✅ **Detailed Explanations:** The trainer provides very detailed explanations, which is appreciated by learners. - ✅ **Hands-On Approach:** The course includes practical examples and encourages students to engage with the Gradle documentation for a better understanding. - ✅ **Visual Aids:** Nice animations and visuals are used to explain concepts, making it easier to grasp complex ideas. - ✅ **Encourages Independence:** The instructor motivates students to use official documentation, which fosters self-learning and independence in using Gradle. - ✅ **Accent:** The instructor's accent adds a unique touch and is enjoyed by some learners. **Cons:** - ❌ **Outdated Content:** Several reviews mention that the course uses older versions of Gradle (v4) and needs to be updated to reflect newer versions (up to Gradle 8+). - ❌ **Length and Pace:** Some learners feel there is too much talking compared to the amount of information, suggesting the videos could be shortened. - ❌ **Pacing Issues:** The course may seem a bit chaotic in its presentation due to pacing and coverage. - ❌ **Accent Challenges:** A few learners find the instructor's accent somewhat difficult to understand at normal speed. - ❌ **Resource Inconsistencies:** The supplied resource material contains deprecated references, leading to confusion and additional work for learners to update the build scripts. - ❌ **Lack of Advanced Topics:** Some advanced topics such as Gradle Daemon, Junit testing with parallelism, and the use of Kotlin instead of Groovy are not covered. - ❌ **Tooling Issues:** There are reports of issues with the eclipseBuildShip plugin and a lack of guidance on using the Gradle properties file, external dependencies file, and lockfiles. ### Additional Feedback: - 🎓 **Didactic Quality:** The didactic quality of the course is generally very good, but it requires an update to remain relevant and useful for learners working with current versions of Gradle. - 🔍 **Audience Specificity:** While the course is suitable for beginners, more complicated examples and a deeper dive into Groovy (or Kotlin) would be helpful for those who have some familiarity with building systems. - ✏️ **Documentation Recommendation:** The course's strength in guiding learners to official documentation is a positive aspect that can lead to a stronger grasp of the tool. ### Conclusion: Overall, the course offers valuable insights into Gradle and Groovy (or Kotlin, if updated) for beginners. However, its usefulness for more experienced users or those using newer versions of Gradle is limited due to outdated content. An update to incorporate recent changes in Gradle would significantly improve its value for learners looking to work with contemporary build automation systems.